Google Chrome will join other browsers with privacy tools

The makers of three top Web browsers are suddenly scrambling to deliver new consumer privacy protections.
Google this week rolled out a new Chrome browser privacy tool, following a similar announcement from Microsoft regarding Internet Explorer 9, the next version of its market-leading browser, due out later this year.
Meanwhile, Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, this week disclosed details of a new feature which experts say comes closest to the Federal Trade Commission's recent call for a simple mechanism empowering consumers to universally stop advertising networks from tailing them around the Web.Technologists and privacy experts say the latest privacy tools from Google and Microsoft fail to universally stop a practice called click-stream tracking, which ad networks use to index the websites you visit. This enables the ad networks to target certain ads to specific Web users.
Privacy advocates have complained for years about Web users having little control over being tracked and targeted. The largest ad networks are operated by Google, Adobe, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. "We have seen the industry try, and fail, to self-regulate in this arena," says Rainey Reitman, analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Here's what Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are now doing:
•Chrome. Google's new tool, Keep My Opt-Outs, strengthens a system set up by the Network Advertising Initiative, a consortium of ad networks and advertisers. Under the NAI scheme, consumers can ask to opt out of being tracked by NAI members.
Some NAI members then stop tracking the user's click streams. But others merely stop sending targeted ads to the user, and carry on with click-stream tracking. The new tool prevents accidental deletion of the user's opt-out request to the NAI members.
"We are, of course, always looking into new tools to give people more transparency and control over their online privacy," Google spokeswoman Christine Chen says.
•Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft's new Tracking Protection feature works much the same as Google's new tool, except that instead of conveying opt-out requests only to NAI members, IE9 will be on the alert for click-stream tracking and targeted ads coming from a list of ad networks — and will block them. The list will be compiled with help from privacy and advertising groups.
"This technology complements the privacy frameworks being developed worldwide," Microsoft Vice President Dean Hachamovitch says.
•Firefox. Mozilla is working on a mechanism that inserts a simple request that gets sent to every website you visit asking the site not to track you. "The idea is to standardize a way of asking everyone not to track you," says Jonathan Mayer, research fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.