14 DAY TRIAL // The Do Not Track standard is looking more dead than ever. Discussions around the online privacy technology have been stalling lately and, after two years, no consensus has been made. In fact, a consensus seems farther away now more than ever.
Some of those involved were in favor of abandoning the discussions, which seemed to be getting nowhere. Still, recently, the Digital Advertising Alliance, the group representing the ad industry, made one last proposal.
In their view, advertisers wouldn't be able to store the URLs of the sites visited by a user, but they would be able to build a profile of their likes and dislikes.
However, this interpretation of Do Not Track didn't sit well with Mozilla or the other pro-privacy groups involved. In its view, Mozilla believes this is not what people expect from DNT.
These two views are at the core of the debate over the technology and, unfortunately, it doesn't seem like any of the two sides are too willing to let go of their ideas. If there was any doubt at this point, there's very little after the last exchange of opinions on the W3C discussion group for DNT.
As it stands, Do Not Track will probably die in its current form. That may sound like a win for the ad people, but it isn't, as government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have made it clear that they intend to regulate the issue if advertisers can't do it themselves.
The EU in particular is working on tough new online privacy laws. Already, sites targeting EU citizens must display a warning that they are using cookies to track users, even if this is just for standard website analytics. But the new law promises to be even more stringent and carry actual penalties for sites that don't comply.