Twitter has agreed to offer Do Not Track requests to grant users more control over their privacy, and potentially opt of some advertising messages.
By choosing not to be tracked at browser level, some websites will no longer allow third parties to note what websites a user visits and when to inform advertising and analytics.
“Do Not Track,” is a standardized privacy initiative that has been heavily promoted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, online privacy advocates and Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox Web browser.
The option lets users opt out of follow recommendations that are tailored to them based on visits to websites and other Twitter accounts.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer and Apple Inc’s Safari, include a “Do Not Track” option that sends a line of code to websites indicating the user does not want to be tracked. But under current regulations, it is up to the website to honor the requests.
Google has said it will implement a “Do Not Track” feature in its Chrome browser later this year.
If a user agreed to be tracked, Twitter will be showing more tailored ‘Who to follow’ suggestions to you based on accounts followed by other Twitter accounts and visits to websites in the “Twitter ecosystem”.
“These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem,” explains Othman Laraki, director of growth and international at Twitter. “We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites.
“By recognising which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.”
Do Not Track is a standardised privacy setting available in some browsers; it tells sites that you have opted out of tracking by way of an HTTP header.
Major online destinations that have endorsed “Do Not Track” include Yahoo, which said in March it would allow consumers “to express their ad targeting preferences to Yahoo” beginning this summer.
