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FTC Joins the Online Privacy Chorus

Nicole Ozer,
Technology & Civil Liberties Director, 老澳门开奖结果 of Northern California
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December 1, 2010

Your online activities say a lot about you: what you like, where you go and even who you know. And companies are often eager to collect this kind of detailed information about you. So we鈥檙e pleased that calling for companies and lawmakers to give us all greater control over our own personal information.

One of the key elements of the FTC鈥檚 proposal is a 鈥渄o not track鈥 list. This would allow us to opt out of online tracking, preventing companies from collecting information about the web sites and pages we visit. It鈥檚 almost impossible for anyone to manage all of the different layers of controls on all of the different online sites. That鈥檚 why it鈥檚 important to have a single, easy-to-use control over whether information about the web sites we visit can be collected and used.

The FTC also for more transparency and clearer explanations of when and how user information is collected and used by online companies. This will make it easier for you to understand exactly what it means to, say, run an app on Facebook (without having to take our to find out) or to understand how your location will be shared with other people through a location-based service (which is often hard to understand, as our recent [PDF] illustrates).

The FTC report helps highlight several of the problems that need to be solved. Now it鈥檚 time for Congress and companies to take the necessary steps to better protect online privacy. Demand Your dotRights by signing our and by pushing your lawmakers and online services to give you real control over your own personal information.

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