The federal government is considering new legislation to allow users to opt-out of online tracking. The concept is similar to the national “do-not-call” list–allowing citizens to choose not to receive targeted marketing messages when online. Understandably, this has generated a good deal of concerned buzz in the online marketing world. Tracking an online user’s behaviors, website visits and content views has long been the holy grail of online marketing. The idea is that gathering all of this data on a user will allow marketers to display messages targeted to the specific user’s interests to increase the likelihood of conversion.

In anticipation of new legislation, a number of browser makers have already begun to take action to implement systems to support a “do-not-track” list. More…

From time to time, we build websites or Web applications that are in-whole or in-part intended for use by children under 13 years old. Many people aren’t aware of it, but there are actually federal rules in the U.S. for how to collect personal information from children. The relevant act is know as COPPA–the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. You can get lots of detail from the FTC about how to comply. Below is a good summary that we use for directing our efforts. More…