In an uncharacteristic piece, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has added a “do not track” tool to Safari in the latest developer build of the forthcoming Mac OS X Lion. This tool is, as one might guess, for increased security.
Here’s an explanation of the “do not track” feature:
Do-not-track tools in browsers automatically send out messages to websites and online-advertising networks requesting that users’ movements around the Web not be tracked. The system will only work if Web companies agree to respect peoples’ tracking preferences.
This new feature was proposed by the FTC and is a voluntary system wherein browser notify ad networks of the “do not track” preference, and it in turn is up to the ad networks to honor this user preference. Safari is now joining Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Firefox. Google is remaining suspiciously quiet.
If I had to guess, Chrome, which is of course made by Google, will not support this features, because Google makes their money from selling ads, and tracking who they are advertising to. This whole thing appears to be political, and hopes to undercut Google’s power. Perhaps not, but that’s how it strikes me at the moment.
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