Mozilla: Web Tool On Firefox To Deter Tracking

By JULIA ANGWIN

Mozilla Corp. plans to add a do-not-track feature to its Firefox Web browser, which could let users avoid having their actions monitored online.

The announcement makes Firefox the first Web browser to heed the Federal Trade Commission’s call for the development of a do-not-track system. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Mozilla was exploring the development of such a system.

Mozilla Corp. plans to add a do-not-track feature to its Firefox Web browser, which could let users avoid having their actions monitored online. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries discusses on Digits.

For Firefox’s tool to work, however, tracking companies would need to agree to not monitor users who enable the do-not-track feature. So far, no companies have publicly agreed to participate in the system, but Mozilla urged them to join in.

“Mozilla recognizes the chicken and egg problem,” the company’s newly appointed global privacy and public-policy leader, Alexander Fowler, wrote in a blog post. But, he wrote, Mozilla is asking that websites and advertisers join its efforts to “honor people’s privacy choices.”

Mozilla’s move comes amid growing privacy concerns about the online-tracking industry. Last month, the FTC called for the creation of a do-not-track system and the Obama administration called for an online “privacy bill of rights” focused on the commercial data-gathering industry. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have said they will examine online-privacy issues this year.

As gatekeepers to the Internet, the Web-browsing-software makers are in the best position to block unwanted tracking. However, the biggest Web-browser makers—Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc.—also operate online advertising businesses that use online-tracking tools. Firefox doesn’t run an ad business but receives the bulk of its funding from an advertising arrangement with Google.

Until recently, the competition between the big three Web browsers focused more on speed and technical features than on privacy tools.

Last month, however, Microsoft said it would revive a powerful privacy feature in its Internet Explorer 9 that would let users stop certain websites and tracking companies from monitoring them.

The Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page article last year that Microsoft removed similar features from Internet Explorer 8 after online advertisers expressed concerns about the impact on their business.

On Monday Google is expected to announced a privacy tool called “Keep My Opt-Outs” that enables users of its Chrome Web browser to permanently opt out of ad-targeting from dozens of companies, according to a person familiar with the matter.

However, these tools still aren’t easy to use. Microsoft’s feature requires users to create a list of tracking companies they want to block. The Google tool is not embedded in its Chrome Web browser. Instead, users will need to download software onto their computer, according to the person familiar with the tool.

The Firefox tool will be embedded in the Web browser, but it won’t be turned on by default. Users will need to check a box to turn on the do-not-track feature.

Once users enable the feature, Firefox would broadcast a do-not-track message to each website a user visits, and to the many tracking companies that are hosted on that website.

Mozilla is asking those who receive the do-not-track request to stop collecting data about the user and stop using that data for marketing purposes. That is one step further than most opt-outs that tracking companies offer, which prevent data usage but don’t prevent data collection.

Mozilla said it isn’t clear if the new tool would be ready to be included in the coming Firefox 4.0 release, or a later version of the software.

—Amir Efrati
contributed to this article.

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