Posted by
Chief Privacy Officer, Microsoft
Last week, we launched a consumer privacy awareness campaign to educate people about the tools and technologies Microsoft provides to help protect their personal information online. We prioritize privacy because we know it’s important to our customers. One of the tangible outcomes of more than a decade of investment in our comprehensive privacy program is the range of useful privacy settings across our product portfolio. Internet Explorer offers a great example— InPrivate Browsing, Tracking Protection Lists and Do Not Track (DNT) are three examples of technologies we’ve developed that help customers protect their privacy as they browse the Web.
DNT has enormous potential. However, consumers will not realize the benefit of DNT until we collectively agree on what it means and how it should be implemented.
As the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Tracking Protection Working Group prepares to meet again next week, Microsoft will continue to collaborate with members of the Working Group and participate fully in the process with the sincere hope that a final and effective DNT standard will be adopted. Further, we are eager for the W3C process to deliver a consistent, agreed upon response to DNT signals so they provide meaningful outcomes for the consumers who have selected the DNT setting.
One of the important discussion points in the W3C process is whether consumers themselves are making meaningful choices about using DNT.
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