Frequently, however, Internet users have no idea that they are being tracked. We browse in ignorant bliss while third parties take note of our viewing proclivities and buying habits, which can then be put to use to sell us sports memorabilia, hype a new restaurant or solicit our donations.

If you are unnerved by this, fear not: The government is preparing to step in. Last month the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection met to discuss the idea of a data privacy law, a concept championed by the committee’s former chairman, Rep. Bobby Rush, D.-Ill. At around the same time, the Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commission both released reports examining ways to regulate data collection on the Web. Both reports discuss the possibility of a “do not track” mechanism, which would allow Internet users to indicate to websites they visit that they want their information to remain private.

Most browsers are already equipped with a privacy mode that temporarily stops them from accepting cookies, caching web pages, or recording the user’s history. But browser-based privacy screens can interfere with websites that need to keep track of users’ activities in order to function fully. Many of the conveniences we take for granted, like forms that fill themselves in, disappear once the privacy shield goes up.

This is why most users enter privacy mode only when they’re doing something, well, private. It’s not altogether surprising that privacy mode is also commonly called “porn mode.” A “do not track” mode could selectively allow information to be tracked to improve the functionality of websites, without allowing that information to be entered into marketing databases – assuming website operators here and abroad respect regulators’ rules.

Privacy modes also fail when it comes to defending against new methods of data mining, including “fingerprinting.” Fingerprinting, a technique being developed by BlueCava Inc., is poised to emerge as a new industry standard. When computers interact with one another – for example, when one computer accesses a website hosted on another – they broadcast a wide array of information about their configurations, including what fonts are installed and what time zones their clocks are set to. This is necessary to ensure that websites display correctly. In fingerprinting, digital surveillance companies use all of this identifying information to distinguish individual computers and other devices as they roam the Web. The surveillance companies can then create profiles of these devices and, by extension, their users. BlueCava has even figured out how to use fingerprinting to link separate devices owned by the same person.

Since fingerprinting doesn’t rely on cookies, existing browser privacy modes don’t work. A “do not track” setting, on the other hand, could potentially be used to indicate to surveillance companies that certain computers’ “fingerprints” should not be kept on file. In fact, BlueCava has said that it intends to build in such an opt-out mechanism. However, despite this stated intention, it has not yet offered an opt-out to the owners of the 200 million devices whose fingerprints it says it has collected so far. There lies the problem with the “do not track” concept: It only works if the companies doing the tracking are willing to cooperate.

via Collecting Digital Fingerprints « Palisades Hudson Financial Group.