The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Tracking Protection Working Group released the first public working draft of a proposed Do Not Track standard in November 2011. While these standards are still in the very early stages of development, we are eager to see solutions that would allow users to prevent third-party tracking. Current tracking prevention tools are complicated to use and often prevent companies only from displaying targeted ads, not collecting information about consumers. Do Not Track should be a simple way for users to request not to be tracked and receive a response from websites telling them their choices are being respected.

One issue brought up by the working group is whether DNT should exist across user sessions. In other words, every time a user restarts a computer or opens a browser, will the Do Not Track settings from before still be in place? The W3C has decided not to take on this issue, arguing it’s not within the scope of the present discussion on DNT.

However, we believe that a DNT tool will be significantly more valuable to users, and will better meet users’ expectations, if users are simply able to “set it and forget it.” While users should be able to modify their Do Not Track requests as they please, DNT requests should not reset with each session. We believe this issue is fully within the scope of the W3C discussion, and should be addressed in such a way as to give consumers meaningful control over their privacy choices.

You can view the complete comments by privacy groups to the W3C here.