Microsoft has recently announced its plans to add an automatic Do Not Track feature to the newest version of Internet Explorer.  Until now, users would have to choose to enable the Do Not Track feature.  On Version 10, Do Not Track is a default setting.  Ironically, the Do Not Track feature isn’t acknowledged by Microsoft’s ad network.  In other words, even when users choose to enable the feature in their browsers, they are still tracked.

There are advertisers who do not agree with Microsoft’s decision.  They are of the belief that since Microsoft has aided in the development of Do Not Track standards, it agreed that this should not be a default feature.  In fact, many advertisers are expected to make a choice to ignore any Do Not Track indicators.

There are also those who believe that Microsoft’s decision to make Do Not Track a default setting is a portion of the company’s plan to hurt Google’s successful online advertising.  In fact, to try to compete with Google, Microsoft at one time tried to purchase Yahoo.

The announcement by Microsoft came as a surprise to many.  The World Wide Web Consortium is developing Do Not Track policies.  According to Aleecia M. McDonald, who is co-chair of that agency’s Tracking Protection Working Group, the organization didn’t know there was going to be an announcement of this kind until actually it happened.

Ms. McDonald, who is also a privacy researcher with Mozilla, sees Microsoft’s action as a reason to come to a determination on the issue now, rather than wait for a later date.  Alex Fowler, Mozilla’s privacy and public policy lead person does not agree with Microsoft’s plan.  He references the World Wide Web Consortium’s latest Do Not Track report that states that in order for Do Not Track to work, it must be based on users’ preferences.  Making it a default setting would take the control out of the end users’ hands.  In fact, Fowler wrote in a blog post, “If DNT is on by default, it’s not a conversation.  For DNT to be effective, it must actually represent the user’s voice.”

Users want their web browser to provide faster speed and not let them wait very long for pages to load. There is a lot of information that must be accessed quickly, and that is why innovations and improvements in web browsing technology are always being done. Almost every day, new products are placed on the market, promising better online experiences and improved features. Amazon will release its newest tablet, Kindle Fire, on November 15, 2011. They anticipate that this will be the closest rival of the iPad.

Equipped with Silk as its browser, the product is a full-color, 8GB, 7-inch multi-touch tablet. Among its new features are faster surfing speeds and increased battery life, which are probably its major advantages. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 will be used to route all web connections from the Kindle Fire to the web page. This process is relatively new compared with what is now available on the market. From the user’s end, “everything” between him and the internet passes through Amazon’s EC2.

Privacy concerns arose when people came to know that their privacy will again be exposed to risks. In one of his articles, a blogger wrote that all of the user’s web surfing habits will pass through Amazon’s EC2. He added that there is no doubt Amazon will have the opportunity to follow all of the user’s online activities. Amazon, in its Terms and Conditions for using Silk, declared that URLs and certain identifiers will stay in its server for 30 days.

Collecting personal information from users on the internet is not a new issue. It has been around for a long time, and it started out as something that was commonly done. For example, it was normal to provide your name and email address when you registered on a certain website. Social networking sites would even give users the option to provide even more sensitive personal information. Users willingly shared data with different web companies, not thinking about any privacy implications.

Then, targeted advertising was popularized by companies that use this collected personal information. They have accumulated so much of it that they could build profiles of users, especially when it comes to their product preferences. Immediately, privacy advocates cautioned users to be more prudent when sharing their personal data. Despite intensive consumer education, privacy issues got worse, and problems cropped up.

Every computer comes stock with some sort of Internet browser; whether it be Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, etc. These browsers start out completely uncensored and unblocked. This is the prospect of America; you have absolute freedom unless you choose to limit it. Parents who buy their young kids computers have to go in and manually install child-blocking software and other censoring programs. This is all done by choice, and is completely unnecessary to the correct function of the computer.

This is true of most countries, the United States being the most prominent. There are some places where the government censorship is running rampant and is instated unwillingly upon its citizens. These places are few and far between, but are highly publicized for their censorship and other injustices on their citizens. China is a prime example. “The Great Firewall of China” is what China’s censoring agenda is satirically known as, and its citizens are becoming fed up with it. The people of this nation used to just be defeated by it, and would never do anything to try and help themselves out of desperation, but recently, movements have been made to free them. People in the Americas and other free nations set up proxy servers to send aid to their companions in less-than-democratic nations. These anonymous proxies ensure anonymous browsing for the citizens, who run the risk of being caught for their “crimes”; YouTube, FaceBook, etc.