The Federal Communications Commission stated on Friday that they will not perform any further actions in order to impose a requirement upon Google, Facebook, or any other internet based companies that would make it harder to track their customer’s online activities.
This new announcement has a huge blow to our online privacy advocates that had even petitioned the agency in order to obtain stronger internet privacy rules and regulations. However, this comes to be a large win for several of our Silicon Valley companies that their business models run solely on monetizing individual’s internet and personal data.
This is also the newest and latest move that is involving an ongoing battle in order to defend the agency’s new “Net Neutrality” rules. Which actually opponents warned them the results of the regulations of popular web sites as well as other online services. However, by rejecting the privacy advocates petition, the FCC is hoping to be able to defuse their argument. The new rules, which had actually been taken into effect this summer, would allow the FCC to be able to regulate those providers of internet access and not individual web sites.
The largely known privacy advocate, Consumer Watchdog, petitioned the FCC back in June in order to support a new technology that would actually allow consumers to be able to signal to web sites and inform such sites that they did not want to be tracked. This would be completed by clicking on a button inside of the user’s browser settings that would be able to send a “Do No Track” message onto website operators while they surf the internet.
However, some web sites have actually honored and provided a commitment to those requests voluntarily, yet several of them still do not honor that request. If this request was in fact succeeded, the petition could have made the Do No Track a U.S. Standard in online web site surfing.
While the growing ambitions, the FCC has actually dramatically expanded their role in act of combating privacy violations that are common amongst communication providers. The agency officials actually slapped a Cox Communications, which is the country’s fourth-largest cable internet company, with a hefty $595,000 fine just last Thursday in order to aid in the settlement of charges that are related to a breach of consumer data. They have also gone after AT&T as well as a number of smaller telecom companies for similar security breaches.
While it may appear that the FCC is stopping short of establishing a means of privacy rules for web site operators, they are also studying how net neutrality could actually allow it to set a new line of privacy expectations for our internet providers.
In the meantime, other outside privacy advocates are aiming to define and even enforce their own Do Not Track standards and have been plagued by several delays as well as debates about what such a signal would in fact require.
The privacy advocates are arguing that the Do Not Track should mean that there will be no information collected about any user that is utilizing the Do Not Track method. Online advertising agencies and groups are saying that the Do Not Track should also prevent a company from forming a special line of targets without impeding in massive data collection. This debate has been superseded by a newer line of tracking technologies that Do Not Track does not design to be addressed.
The current Do Not Track proposal before the known World Wide Web consortium, is actually an international standard for web bodies. This has faced criticism from several privacy advocates as well as leaders up on Capitol Hill that say it doesn’t even matter as there is not enough to protect consumers from large companies that actually track users.
The complete documentation that was written by the FCC can be viewed in an online PDF format here.
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