Privacy groups seek 'Do Not Track List'

I wonder how tis will be implemented. Does it mean the websites will not be able to place cookies on users' computers?

Seems a bit of an over kill since you can block tracking cookies already.
Get Zonealarm and turn on the privacy control. Allow only the ones you need like your bank, etc. Block those advertisers in their tracks. Turn off those 'private headers' too.

This is getting too much: distracting, annoying, even disturbing and all unwanted calls. No matter how "insignificant" this issue might sound to some or how some others deliberately paint this issue as such, this is NOT a problem of annoyance only.

Ability to place unidentifiable calls, for instance, is used widely not only by "innocent" marketers, but for criminal purposes, which makes the little benefit of it actually unimportant, and which has to give the Government legitimate grounds for taking appropriate centralized measures to protect individual and public safety. Existing laws has to be corrected and/or new law(s) have to be introduced for this matter, equal to individuals, companies and organizations, with possible rare exceptions for law enforcement and government only and only under special circumstances.

Here are some ideas:

- ALL calls have to be identifiable. Caller ID and Name (Company Name) have to be displayed (real, legally obtained, listed, and that could be tracked back). Calls from public phones/booths have to display appropriate IDs/numbers.

- Technology has to adapt to satisfy mandatory identification. (E.g.: existing devices that currently enable ID suppression have to be rendered unable to place calls without positive identification; an attempt to use such device and/or method has to be tracked and recorded at a service provider level; etc.)

- Any attempt to fake an ID/Name, use someone else’s ID/Name, illegally obtain and use right to hide Caller ID and Name has to be deemed as a punishable offense.

If a person, company or organization is legal and honest there should be no reason to hide their identity. By keeping themselves “private” they are actually violating other’s peace and privacy. (E.g., one can not drive a car without a valid license plate, or enter a plane without a valid passport/ID, etc. Calling without a Caller ID/Name has to be viewed as knocking someone’s door with a full face cover mask and costume on.)

Regards,

NKS

I keep receiving phone calls that actually say
anonymous.
It reads like this :

----------------------
anonymous

Seems suspicious to me,
why are they hiding?
If they want to hide, while calling me,
I don't want to talk to them and
I won't answer. I'm trying to get them
on the answering machine, in case they
say something illegal I can let the
police hear it.
I also get "unavailable" calls all day long
10 times a day, and "private calls".

also "toll free service" does not really ID
who the caller is. It should say the Name of the caller.

* To those commenting about Caller ID, your posts are off target as this story is about blocking internet usage tracking and has has nothing to do with anonymous or unwanted phone calls. Please post them in the appropriate forum and leave this space for an uncluttered area to discuss ways to deal with those who track your internet usage.

That being said, I believe that companies should be restricted in what info they can gather about you while you surf the web and how that info can be used; and that websites that employ these tracking methods should state 'clearly' that they are doing this and give you an option to opt out.
Most legitimate websites will state this in their privacy statement or ocasionally on some obscure, hard to find page on their site but their is seldom an option to opt out, and few people ever bother to read these privacy statements.

As for creation of a centralized "Do Not Track List", current web technologies make implementing such a list difficult if not impossible to achieve, not to mention enforce. And because a computer's internet IP address can change often this list would have to store other unique info for each user/computer listed and if IP-based such a system would require software on every computer that would update this list every time the IP address changed. This 'list' would require a system similar in scale and scope to Domain Name System (DNS) used to associate a website URL to an actual IP address (requiring many powerful web and database servers and a means of propagating changes of IP addresses or other data to all servers in the system).

Even with such a "Do Not Track List" system in place how do you enforce it? When you visit a website your browser is requesting the webpage from the server on which resides (you are "calling" them, they are not calling you). Every web server hosting a site that uses tracking methods would have to check this list for every request of a page on their server. This would require the web server to send a request to the list system with info the visitor's browser supplied idenifying the user/computer and wait for a response indicating whether or not the user was on the "Do Not Track List" before the web server could respond to an individual web page request. This would result in slower response times for web pages, increased workload for the web server and a huge increase in internet traffic caused by all the calls to the "Do Not Track List".

The only place it would be possible to verify if the web server actually checked the "Do Not Track List" would be at the browser when the requested page was returned to it and would require that the server returned some sort of code or other data from the "Do Not Track List" that is unique to each user, different from the data used to identify each list member by web servers and known to the browser. Even if the browser restricted cookies until such verification was received there would be no way to ensure that data stored in cookies from this point on was not actually being used to track a user anyway. It would basically amount to nothing more than a giant "Honor System" that dishonest websites could readily violate.

I agree with the earlier poster that this "Do Not Track List" would be overkill. As well as ineffectual and unenforcible it is unneccessary. Simply tightening up your browser's cookie restrictions will do alot to thwart attempts to track you online. Block third party cookies and block all cookies from known tracking websites (such as doubleclick.net which only does tracking and advertising). You can also learn to use the "HOSTS" file to block access to advertising, banner, porn or other obnoxious sites. Or you can use software that is designed to stop internet tracking or advertising while being more user-friendly. I use a combination of all the above.

This would be enforced like everything else. "Selective enforcement"
I'm posting this comment on the solution, this website and any like it.