Online Rules and Regulations

The proposed Web privacy rules will enable users to decide who can track their data.

Image: Brian Snyder/Reuters

The Federal Trade Commission is advocating a set of regulations that could be a blow to Web marketers and a boon to consumers.

The agency has rolled out a broad set of guidelines that would put the power over who tracks their online behavior in the hands of Web surfers, the New York Times reports. The guidelines would assume that surfers don’t want to be tracked by marketers or other companies compiling data and would allow them to opt in to such tracking, creating a situation comparable to federal do-not-call lists.

That proposal is a change to the current state of affairs on the Internet, which is largely self-policed by companies when it comes to tracking consumer behavior.

The FTC released its guidelines Wednesday and is welcoming the public's feedback over the next two months. The issue of online privacy has become particularly sensitive with the rise of social networks, particularly Facebook, which has been criticized over privacy practices, Matthew Ingram of Giga Om writes:

Although the commission did not mention any companies by name, Facebook, in particular, has come under fire for the way it handles users’ information, including changes to its privacy settings—which triggered a letter to the FTC from four senators complaining about the company’s behavior—and more recent developments such as the fact that user IDs were being sent to third-party companies. Some of those companies passed on those user IDs to advertisers, and in the case of Rapleaf, the marketing database company connected those user IDs to other personally identifiable information from other sources (although Rapleaf said later that this was inadvertent and that it has stopped doing so).

While the commission’s recommendations represent a change to current Web practices, there is some question as to whether it can impose such changes without action from Congress. And Congress has been reluctant to tinker very much with the Internet for fear of squelching innovation.

“I do not think that under the FTC’s existing authority we could mandate unilaterally a system of ‘do not track,’” David Vladek, the director of the commission’s bureau of consumer protection, said.

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