Robert Siciliano, a McAfee identity-theft expert, explains how Google Chrome and Firefox now let you signal that you don't want to be tracked for ads. Websites aren't required to honor it yet, but clearing cookies and enabling Do Not Track can reduce targeted ads. He expects regulatory pressure to force compliance within six months to a year.
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And are you fed up with online advertisers tracking your information and contacting you? We're going to sit down with an identity theft expert to find out just how you can protect your privacy. Stay with us, everyone. You're watching the Fox 25 Morning News. You— have you ever wondered how an advertiser gets your email address and knows what kind of products you've been looking for online? Or maybe that you've been searching for cars? I don't know, whatever it may be. Well, thanks to a U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposal, there's a way to stop that from happening to you. And joining us this joining us this morning is Robert Siciliano. He is a consultant with McAfee and an identity theft expert. Nice to see you this morning.
Good morning, Kim.
You know, so you're on there and you're searching for something and all of a sudden you start getting all these pop-ups from, you know, something in that same vein.
Yeah, yeah.
Like I was saying, you're searching for a car and suddenly you start getting advertisement for cars. How does this happen?
It's amazing what they know about you. Um, marketers and advertisers on the web have created technology to essentially track the websites you visit, the links you click on, and they're able to develop a profile on you, your gender, whether you're married or single, what kind of car you drive, kids or no kids, and they do this with various technologies that track you, and it's essentially to send you targeted ads.
Right. Very scary, actually, if I think about that, because I don't like the idea that somebody's following me that closely.
Yeah, it can be unnerving, and the Wall Street Journal did an exposé and basically told the world about it, and privacy advocates are now up in arms arms, and the Federal Trade Commission is clamping down.
Absolutely. So it's called Do Not Track. Tell me about this tool.
So Do Not Track is an initiative by the FTC, and the behavioral marketing industry is a self-regulating body that now is feeling the pressure. So what's happening is websites like Google or browsers like Google's Chrome and Firefox, Mozilla Firefox, are incorporating tools built into the browser that you can turn on and off the tracking so what perceived privacy violations there might be, aren't occurring.
Okay, so you as a consumer turn it on and off, not— they don't do it?
Well, right now the websites themselves aren't being required to comply in any way. So right now it's up to the consumer to initiate some type of a plugin in this browser letting the website know that you don't want to be tracked, but the website still needs to comply.
Okay, so let me ask you— right, exactly. They may say don't track them, but they still come after you anyway.
Right.
Okay, so how do we police that? How ultimately can you stop that?
So right now, as I said, the self-governing behavioral marketing industry is feeling the pressure, and it's just a matter of time until the FTC clamps down to a point where if they don't do something now, then it's going to be a real problem for them, and they're going to start losing a lot of money. So my guess is within the next 6 months to a year, you're going to see a lot of changes occur.
Sure. Okay, now we know obviously being a nuisance is one of the downsides of this happening to you, but what other things could occur as a result of it?
Well, there are concerns amongst privacy privacy advocates that you're being tracked, they know a lot about you. But one thing that people should know is that most of the tracking really is done anonymously, that it's not going to affect your personal identity. I don't see any potential fraud occurring from this, but there are, you know, privacy issues that you should be aware of. Most people, what they should do if they're concerned about this is to clear out their cookies on their browser, that if you clear out your cookies, you know, automatically, or just do it weekly or monthly, that that will turn down the volume on this type of tracking.
Yeah, and it keeps them from maybe knowing as much about you. Is that how they do it?
Yeah, you're going to start to see ads that maybe don't pertain to you. They're not going to know nearly as much about you, and you're basically taking control of your privacy in that way.
Now, this do not track tool, does it exist at this point?
So Mozilla and Google both announced within the past 24 hours that yes, they have this tool that you can turn on that's easily accessible that will assist you in protecting your privacy.
And how do I go about accessing that?
So Mozilla and both Google will probably send you a notification within your browser saying like there's a new feature. It'll come with the update. It'll probably be an icon prominently featured in your toolbar browser.
And then you just hope that websites have enough— I don't know if they're just compassionate enough not to respect it and not to do so.
Well, the hopes are of the privacy advocates, of course, that websites begin to comply. And again, more than likely they're going to have to before the government clamps down.
Right. All right, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
We're glad you could come in and share the information. It's useful information for everybody who uses the web, that's for sure.
