The New York Times is reporting that Twitter has begun acknowledging the “Do Not Track” feature of Mozilla’s Firefox browser. By doing this, Firefox users can now opt-out of all information tracking practiced by Twitter. This includes cookies and third-party tracking for behavioral advertising purposes. Internet Explorer 9 has a similar “Tracking Protection” feature, but users will have to install Mozilla’s tracking protection list to enable it.
The announcement that Twitter would be supporting “Do Not Track” came, according to The New York Times, during a panel discussion at the Internet Week Festival in New York today. The chief technology officer of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Ed Felten, mentioned that Twitter has begun supporting the privacy initiative. Both Firefox and Twitter then acknowledged and confirmed what Felten said with tweets on their official Twitter accounts.
@Twitter supports DNT!
The reaction to the announcement was largely positive, with plenty of jabs at Facebook for not doing the same. Check out a few of the reaction tweets below.
@twitter voluntarily implemented it, I don’t feel the need to use it. #TrustIsATwoWayStreet
http://t.co/wridn6dG yet another reason @twitter > @facebook . And why the gap is growing larger
#Twitter doing the right thing! #donottrackme http://t.co/ywt0nDoi
(via The New York Times)