Mozilla and Stanford Pitch New Cookie Blocking Approach
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Techno-privacy wonks are laying yet another rail for Do Not Track. Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, has paired with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society to create a Cookie Clearinghouse. The project, still in a nascent stage, essentially will be two lists of domains — one that users’ browsers will permit to set cookies and one that will be blocked from doing so.
But the initiative could have a greater impact on digital data privacy than the simple concept suggests.
The effort comes at a time when everyday people are gaining a heightened awareness of rampant data collection by corporations — for logistics and marketing purposes — that in turn fuels National Security Administration surveillance. It also comes at a time of introspection among those involved in the development of a Do Not Track standard at the Worldwide Web Consortium, whose work is now more than a year and a half overdue. Some who have been working on that project, including Stanford privacy activist Jonathan Mayer, believe it may need to draw to a close with no resolution.
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