EthicsBite™

An announcement was made last week that Microsoft’s upcoming latest version of Internet Explorer will automatically default to the “do not track” option. Why is that an important ethical step in the online world?

Remember the term “eyeballs” – that quaint concept in the earlier days of the World Wide Web? The key to marketing success was to get as many eyeballs on your page as possible.  But as competition for eyeballs increased, mere “eyeball” count gave way to more sophisticated concepts such as “click through” and “driving traffic.” A whole new consulting opportunity sprang forth called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Swiftly and surely the focus then shifted from driving traffic to your site (still highly important) to getting as much information as possible about the site visits obtained. Cookies are being placed on your computer not just from the sites you actually visit but also from their web oriented marketing vendors who want to gather more data on YOU. Targeted marketing based on that information has created whole new companies which present you with specific online “coupons” in an attempt to get you to buy.

The web browsers, principally Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and others, provide a way for you to browse the web without such tracking going on, but most of us never use it. As a result our privacy is disregarded on the basis that we have given our permission to be tracked. However, that “permission” is based on a default selection chosen by others together with a lack of training and transparency for all but the more technical among us.

This week’s announcement that Microsoft’s newest version of Internet Explorer, still the most widely used browser, will automatically default to “do not track” and, more importantly, provide a visible alert of that fact to the user, is an important first step in increasing public awareness of the digital privacy issue. Unfortunately it only occurs when the browser is installed; not every time the browser is launched.