Did you know that Twitter has been tracking your activities on its website? All big websites, like Google, Facebook etc., track their users in order to understand their surfing habits. This helps these companies to serve more targeted advertisements.
But now there is a good news! Twitter will no longer track you. Well, you’ll have to explicitly opt for this, otherwise by default tracking is going on an will go on as usual. Now at least Twitter will listen to you if you do not want to be tracked.
Now, Twitter has announced that it will begin to honor the Do No Track HTTP header. This move will allow Twitter users to refuse being tracked by the popular micro-blogging website.
Do Not Track is being promoted by the US Federal Trade Commission, Mozilla and other user privacy promoters. Othman Laraki, Twitter’s Director of Growth and International said on Thursday, “As always, we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience. For those who don’t want to tailor Twitter, we offer ways to turn off this collection.”
Twitter also praised FTC for taking the leadership role in promoting Do Not Track. It noticeable that big players like Google and Facebook do not yet honor the DNT option. Google’s Chrome browser does not even provide the option of sending DNT header! The business of these websites rely on data collected about users’ surfing habits.
Mozilla applauded Twitter’s decision of officially honoring DNT. The non-profit organization reported that 8.6% of the desktop users and 19% of the mobile users now use Do Not Track option. The trend is gathering strength steadily.
Yahoo Inc. has already announced in March that it will begin to honor the DNT option in the summer of 2012.
As more and more companies are joining this initiative, we can hope for a more private web surfing experience in future.
Do let me know if you have opted for do-not-track-me option? Thank you for using TechWelkin
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