Just a year ago, the discussion about whether websites could be prevented from tracking visitors was an arcane topic limited to hard-core privacy activists – and dismissed by many as fundamentally impossible: The equivalent of the Do Not Call list, the naysayers argued, would technically lead to more tracking.

But now Do Not Track has evolved into something simpler – a signal sent by your browser to a website. The technology is included in Monday's release of the most widely used browser in the world – Internet Explorer – and will be in next week's expected release of Firefox 4.

Microsoft went even further, including a tool that lets you import lists of tracking sites you want to block entirely so that you don't have to rely, as Do Not Track does, on the goodwill of a website to comply with your wishes.

The basic Do Not Track mechanism, endorsed by the Federal Trade Commission, is technically simple, but politically and economically complicated.

One all-in-one solution is offered by privacy software maker Abine, which combines the power of the IE9 and Firefox implementations and adds options.

Abine's Firefox tool, Do Not Track Plus importsIE9's Tracker Protection List and builds on Firefox's Do Not Track header, which comes as a simple on or off setting. When turned on, every time you visit a website, Firefox sends a simple standardized message that says "Don't track me."

It's still up to a website whether it chooses to obey that flag, but there's currently support in Congress to force U.S. businesses to do so. Without such legislation, the FTC could only act against companies that promise to obey the flag, but don't actually do so.

But Abine's tool approaches the problem from the other direction, as well, by allowing users to create a whitelist of websites that the user doesn't mind being tracked by. So, for instance, if you are fine with the personalization at Nytimes.com, you could choose to have your browser not send the antitracking header to that site.

"We strongly believe people will go out of their way to support sites and businesses that treat them well but will also go out of their way to avoid businesses that annoy them or breach their trust," said Abine co-founder Andrew Sudbury.

The idea here is to find a way to mollify the online ad industry – and the websites that rely on them for revenue (Wired.com included) – who collectively argue that the only way for sites to continue to offer free content and services to users is via targeted ads. Behavioral tracking, they argue, is largely anonymous, but allows for more relevant ads that command a premium from advertisers.

Abine's tool, which builds on the company's suite of privacy tools, adds a third element to its antitracking tools by building on the online ad industry's preferred method of letting users opt out of tracking, which is cookies. Currently web users can opt out of multiple ad networks by using the Network Advertising Initiative page, but those cookies aren't permanent and if you clear your cookies, the opt-out disappears. Abine's tool makes them permanent and keeps the antitracking cookies, even if you clear other cookies.

Abine says it will bring the tool to IE9 soon, but Chrome is another story. According to Abine, Google has not yet responded to its request to know when browser extensions will be allowed to set header messages.

Photo: Tracks in the snow. (hbakkh)

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