Mediaboss Marketing

WASHINGTON -- A coalition of internet giants including Google has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most web browsers, a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.

The reversal is being announced as part of the White House's call for Congress to pass a "privacy bill of rights," that will give people greater control over the personal data collected about them.

The industry has been caught in a number of high-profile privacy slip-ups. Facebook recently agreed to settle charges by the US government that some of its privacy practices had been unfair and deceptive to users. And last week, Google acknowledged it had been circumventing the privacy settings of people using Apple's web-browsing software on their iPhones, iPads and computers. It stopped the practice after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

The new do-not-track button is not going to stop all web tracking. The companies have agreed to stop using the data about people's web browsing habits to customize ads, and have agreed not to use the data for employment, credit, health care or insurance purposes. But the data can still be used for some purposes such as "market research" and "product development" and can still be obtained by law enforcement officers.

The do-not-track button also would not block companies such as Facebook from tracking their members through "Like" buttons and other functions.

Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It's a good start. But we want you to be able to not be tracked at all if you so choose."

The do-not-track button has been hotly debated ever since the Federal Trade Commission called for its adoption about two years ago. Mozilla's Firefox web browser was the first to add the do-not-track option early last year. Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser added it soon after, and Apple included it in the latest version of its operating system, Mountain Lion, which was released to developers this year.

But even people who clicked on the button were still being tracked because advertisers and tracking companies had not agreed to honor the system.

Thursday's announcement means they will work to begin adopting and honoring the system within nine months, according to the coalition, the Digital Advertising Alliance, which represents over 400 companies.

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Internet giants agree to adopt 'no track' browser button