Free Internet Security

Do not track is a technology developed to honor the privacy of users browsing the web and to enable the users to make their own decision on opting-out of the web tracking by websites and advertisement networks.

The current scenario is that the users browsing the web are not capable of opting out of the web tracking that goes on at the web server end as well as by the third party ad networks.

Based on the web tracking the users are provided with targeted ads and the ad networks generate huge revenue out of these targeted ads.

The option allows users to now voluntarily opt-out of web tracking. This doesn’t involve deletion of any files or data from the system.

The user needs to simply allow for creation of a do not track cookie. This can be done through the browser settings that are available in Firefox and IE 9.0.

The working of Do not track involves sending of a header to the website that includes the do not track option. Through this the website will be aware that the user is opting-out of the web tracking and so the website or the ad network associated with the website needs to make sure that they do not track that particular user’s browsing habits.

The do not track technology is not a list or some database. This would save the vast amount of data that needs to be collected and compiled. The do not track also allows for easy implementation without much changes to the current architecture of the web browsers and the server or the websites that are already in place.

Currently Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9.0 have the Do not track feature. There are a number of add-ons also available that would assist the users in enabling this feature.

Firefox do not track feature can be enabled by going to the options window of Firefox and then navigating to the advance tab. Under the Browsing subsection of the Advanced tab, the user can put a tick mark next to “Tell Website I do not want to be tracked”. This will tell the websites that the user has opted out of the web tracking.