Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Blog

The Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) recently announced that its members will work “to add browser-based header signals to the set of tools by which consumers can express their preferences” not to be tracked online and will work with browser providers to develop “consistent language across browsers…that describes to consumers the effect of exercising such choice.”

This announcement came on the heels of the Obama administration’s not all data would be protected by a Do Not Track mechanism. The data collected by companies adhering to a Do Not Track mechanism still could be used for market research and product development purposes and the mechanism would not block companies such as Facebook from tracking its members through the “Like” button and other functions. According to the report, Stuart Ingis, counsel to the DAA, stated that the term “Do Not Track” is a misnomer because the mechanism would be “stopping some data collection, but it’s not stopping all data collection.”

Some privacy advocates have criticized the Do Not Track mechanism for targeting only “third-party” sites. “First-party” websites, which are websites that consumers visit directly, can still collect data on visitors and serve them online advertisements based on the collected data.

The DAA’s announcement indicates that the browser-based consumer choice mechanism “will be implemented within nine months.”