Electronic Frontier Foundation announces new 'Do Not Track' policy for web browsing to boost privacy

EFF teams up with coalition of web firms in effort to enable web users to have more choice over who can track their browsing and data

Digital civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has partnered with web and technology companies to announce a stronger policy standard for a "Do Not Track" (DNT) web browser setting.

The new policy standard is designed to better protect web users from sites that attempt to secretly follow and record their internet activity.

It's also designed to encourage advertisers and other companies that collect data to respect a user's choice not to be tracked online.

However, the service isn't compulsory, so it's unlikely to prevent the likes of Facebook from tracking web users across the internet without their consent.

The DNT preference can be selected on a variety of web and mobile browsers including FireFox and Google Chrome to indicate that the user wants to opt out of having their online activities tracked.

"We are greatly pleased that so many important web services are committed to this powerful new implementation of Do Not Track, giving their users a clear opt-out from stealthy online tracking and the exploitation of their reading history," said EFF chief computer scientist Peter Eckersley.

"These companies understand that clear and fair practices around analytics and advertising are essential not only for privacy but for the future of online commerce," he added.

The coalition behind the stronger DNT setting is led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Disconnect, a privacy software platform used by over 10 million people.

Analytics providers Mixpanel, tracker-blocking extension AdBlock, publishing site Medium and private search engine DuckDuckGo are all part of the coalition.

The DuckDuckGo search engine promises to never track its users and has boomed in popularity since the US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of security services' online surveillance activities.

The new DNT standard isn't an advert or tracker blocker, but "works in tandem with these technologies".

"The failure of the ad industry and privacy groups to reach a compromise on DNT has led to a viral surge in ad blocking, massive losses for internet companies dependent on ad revenue, and increasingly malicious methods of tracking users and surfacing advertisements online," said Disconnect CEO Casey Oppenheim.

"Our hope is that this new DNT approach will protect a consumer's right to privacy and incentivize advertisers to respect user choice, paving a path that allows privacy and advertising to coexist," he concluded.