“A coalition of Internet giants including Google Inc. has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers—a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.
The reversal is being announced as part of the White House’s call for Congress to pass a “privacy bill of rights,” that will give people greater control over the personal data collected about them.
The industry has been caught in a number of high-profile privacy slip-ups. Facebook Inc. recently agreed to settle charges by the U.S. government that some of its privacy practices had been unfair and deceptive to users. And last week, Google acknowledged it had been circumventing the privacy settings of people using Apple Inc.’s Web-browsing software on their iPhones, iPads and computers. It stopped the practice after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
The new do-not-track button isn’t going to stop all Web tracking. The companies have agreed to stop using the data about people’s Web browsing habits to customize ads, and have agreed not to use the data for employment, credit, health-care or insurance purposes. But the data can still be used for some purposes such as “market research” and “product development” and can still be obtained by law enforcement officers…..”
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