The FTC created in 2003 a "do not call" registry (which, since, has gain tremendous popularity by preventing telemarketing phone calls) in order to limit the hours that unsolicited telephone calls may be made to consumers and it helped enormously.
Nowadays, the Federal Trade Commission faced a new ‘request’ as it has been asked by nine privacy and consumer organizations to come up with a "do not track" list for internet users who want their online activities not to be tracked, stored and used in advertising purposes.
Collecting information from users has become a top activity with the Internet advertising companies and marketers so as to create a sort of marketing profile of the individual who can become a more accurate target for their advertising messages It seems that over the past months Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have all focused their attention on the acquirement of online advertising companies.
What the "do not track" list basically means is that advertisers that place electronic cookies or tags on consumers' computers would be obliged to register with the FTC all domain names of the servers that deal with this sort of activities. According to Mark Cooper, research director of Consumer Federation of America, online opt-outs should be similar to the Do Not Call list, in what concerns them being known and used by the consumers.
Collecting and using personally identifiable information about health and financial activities would henceforth become forbidden .Moreover, the companies involved in tracking personal data would be subjected to independent auditing. Previously to the FTC hearing, AOL, Time Warner internet division, declared their willingness to allow to their users the choice to exclude online ads they get because of the websites they visited.
