Lately, when people ask me what I think of some of the up-and-coming website personalization companies that are out there, I say "personalization is good, but the governement will eventually legislate against some of these practices." When the news came out in 2005 that users were deleting cookies regularly, a lot of skepticism arose about the accuracy of "lifetime profiles." When the advent of PIE technology for automatic replacement of deleted cookies was announced, something smelled fishy to me. Why is there so much effort being invested in tracking people against their will? Why can't everybody just follow in the footsteps of the sites who have created a simple log-in mechanism that can deliver a personalized experience to registered members?

In today's news, I read about a lobby in Washington by nine privacy and consumer organizations who want to create a "do not track" list much like the national "do not call" list. The Federal Trade Commission is in hearings this week to discuss the proposal that would stop the targeting of advertising by browsing behavior. The "do not call" list that was launched four years ago now has 145,000,000 telephone numbers on it, and I would imagine that a "do not track" list might grow fairly quickly as well.

Will legislation be passed to allow consumers to block personal profiling? I don't really see why the government needs to be involved. Consumers could simply be educated on the proper use of their cookie blocking settings in their browser. Perhaps just the public status of this story will lead some consumers to tighten up their browser settings. As of 1pm PDT this afternoon, there were almost 400 articles online about the "do not track list." In his article today, Declan McCullagh makes the good point that targeted advertising is nothing new. It's just a lot more refined now that we have more technology. But, those people who understand targeting and segmentation embrace it.  For example, we don't have any dogs in our house. Maybe it would be good thing if I didn't see a lot of dog food and flea treatment ads everywhere I went?

In a study last year, consumers said they would be willing to fill out a couple of extra fields in a subscription form to ensure that they got more targeted content. I would bet that those same consumers would be willing to opt into a service that would ensure that they don't receive any more untargeted advertisements. Maybe I should start the "please track" list to counteract the "do not track" list and we'll figure out whose list grows more quickly.