Mozilla Do Not Track win
By Bala Shah

The Open Source software movement is one of the greatest idealistic collaborative efforts of the modern world.  Highly skilled techies volunteer their time and specialized skills to create systems and products like internet browser Mozilla Firefox.  Firefox is hugely popular in India and neighboring Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

EFF had commended Mozilla’s new version of Firefox as being the best browser which prevents advertisers from profiling and tracking us when we visit their websites.  Not everyone wants advertising companies to know they have read a certain piece of news or purchased pyjamas for husband / wife.

Mozilla has just announced a huge win for its Do Not Track (DNT) feature in the Firefox browser.

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Mozilla introduced the Do Not Track (DNT) HTTP header approach in January and launched the feature in Firefox 4. We’ve worked closely with more than fifty leading companies and trade groups to help devise ways to implement DNT and offer users more control over how their browsing behavior is tracked and used online. Mozilla is working with the W3C and IETF organizations to standardize the DNT header, and we were pleased to see Microsoft subsequently include the mechanism in Internet Explorer 9.

To provide users more choice and control over online behavioral tracking, it’s essential that publishers and advertisers adopt and implement Web technologies that respect consumers’ wishes to not be tracked across their Web properties and services.

Today there are two significant developments on this front:

•The AP News Registry service, run by the Associated Press, implemented the DNT header across 800 news sites servicing 175 million unique visitors each month.
•The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), which includes the five major media and advertising agencies, is initiating a process to explore incorporating the DNT header, as proposed by Mozilla, into its Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA). The DAA represents more than 5,000 leading media and technology companies that span the entire marketing-media ecosystem.
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