Online Privacy…Is there such a thing?
When a person visits a web site, sometimes the site will track that person’s internet browsing routines. The reason why companies track the browsing activity is to view consumer likes and to learn how to better market their product or service. Now that internet users know that companies track, the people are not happy. So the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued new regulation recommendations to help protect consumer privacy via internet.
First, the FTC suggests that companies should embed into their daily operations a “privacy by design” as stated by the FTC web site. Second, the companies should simply state that the web site will be collecting data from the consumer. According to the New York Times article by Wyatt and Vega, the FTC even suggest a button that says do not track, which is very similar to the privacy from telemarketer’s national do not call list. Lastly, the FTC suggests that information practices of each company should be really easy to access.
In my opinion, the new FTC suggestions will help to improve the privacy for consumers and especially a huge deal for the consumers who actually desire more access into protecting their privacy on the internet. But what do you think? Can your browsing activities really be kept private? There is no real way that consumers to know for certain that their computers aren’t being tracked.
Think about it,
Jefo
