Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission recommended browser companies add options that give users the ability to opt out of online tracking technologies. Mozilla, Microsoft and Google responded by offering ‘Do Not Track’ features in their browsers. But even with greater choice and control over their online experience, people are not using these features. Alex Fowler, head of Mozilla’s Global Privacy and Public Policy, says that only one to two percent of users have activated the Do Not Track feature in Firefox 4.
The low adoption rate is not necessarily because people don’t care about online privacy tools and issues, but more likely because privacy features are buried within browser options making them difficult to find and time-consuming to figure out. Even Mr. Fowler admitted that the Do Not Track function is not easy to find in the current version of Mozilla’s browser.
WOT users are concerned about online privacy protection, so we happily share step-by-step, browser-by-browser instructions on how to turn on these features for Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Our friends at Abine, a company specializing in online privacy, compiled a visual guide to enable private browsing and the Do Not Track feature in your browser.
Check out Abine’s guide to pro-privacy browser settings here for maximum privacy protection.