Now, Google has agreed to support the Do-Not-Track button and will add it to Chrome within nine months. You may remember that the Federal Trade Commission called for the adoption of a Do-Not-Track button on Web browsers two years ago. In theory, it would allow consumers more autonomy in sharing their own personal privacy with third parties. Nevertheless, when Firefox and Internet Explorer added Do-Not-Track buttons, users were still tracked by advertisers and companies that hadn’t agreed to honor the arrangement. What is it they say about good intentions?

Meanwhile, California is attempting to shut down data privacy leaks via mobile applications. The state has reached an agreement with Google, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon.com, Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion — one that it hopes will protect smartphone users from further privacy breaches like the Path and Google debacles uncovered earlier this month.

When it comes to the Internet and government intervention, we have to be mindful of the careful dance around precedent. We applaud when the U.S. government tries to protect us from data poachers with a privacy bill of rights, but just a month ago we were up in arms about the Stop Online Piracy Act. So, which is it going to be? Do we want the government regulating the Internet or don’t we? As you well know, I tend to have a cold, black heart that’s filled to the brim with pessimism about Internet privacy; the Do-Not-Track button and the White House’s privacy bill of rights feel to me like security theatre.

What do you think? Will the Do-Not-Track button make a difference in upholding consumer data privacy? Is it the role of government to regulate the Internet? The comments are waiting to hear from you.

As the Google giant is creating new breeds of consumers (“cross-consumers,” I call them — spanning email, news, mobile devices, Web browsers, etc.), what is happening to all of our personal information? Google knows who we’re emailing, what we’re emailing, what we’re searching…

The launch of Chrome in September marked a big step for Google — the browser would be in direct competition with Microsoft’s IE. I downloaded Google’s Chrome right away, eager to test it out. I enjoyed features like “Google Suggest,” which sends Google searches as you’re typing them out, anticipating your search desires. With every word you type out in your search query, you get links pertaining to that particular phrase. As if searching could get easier?

As it is, we can literally find out anything about everything. Google culls information from many sites and quick answers can be seen directly on the search results. If I wanted to know the dates of the American Civil War, I just need to type in American Civil War and I immediately get the start and end dates in the summaries. I don’t even have to go to any of the sites if I don’t want to.

But even if I’m not going anywhere, my information still is.

How secure is my information? Brian Rakowski, product manager for Chrome, said queries sent to Google through the autosuggest feature include the user’s IP address and the time the query was made. But Google logs only 2% of this information, according to Rakowski, and makes it anonymous after 24 hours by removing the last four IP address digits associated with the query.

What about the privacy feature on Chrome — the incognito tab? This feature turns off autosuggest and allows users to surf the Web without leaving a history or cookies. But, according to Google, you can’t entirely cover up someone’s Internet activity.

Search wisely.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) will have a new privacy setting. The new setting, dubbed “porn mode” by bloggers because it effectively erases all evidence of sites you’ve visited, was officially confirmed earlier in the week by Microsofts’s program manager, Andy Zeigler.

Zeigler sums up the change as one that gives users the choice to disclose private information, as opposed to being forced to through browser settings that save cookies, browsing history and the like. He mentions a few specific cases for needing the added privacy, such as purchasing a gift for a loved one online without ruining the surprise or feeling comfortable enough at a public Internet kiosk to do your personal banking.

Zeigler states in his blog that when developing IE 8, Microsoft took a look at the concerns users had with IE 7. Privacy stood out as a main concern – “the so-called, ‘over-the-shoulder privacy,’ or the ability to control what their spouses, friends, kids and co-workers might see” as well as the “so-called ‘3^rd-party’ content on websites, some of which can gather data about how you browse the web.” People just didn’t want others seeing which sites they visited.

When enabled, Microsoft’s “InPrivate Browsing” tool will switch off cookies, browsing and search history and will automatically clear the cache at the end of the browser session. It also eliminates auto-complete and the storing of other form data.

How different is this really from Apple’s Safari browser and Mozilla Firefox’s security features? Microsoft may be just stepping up its game a bit, considering Mozilla now holds 19% market share. But there are some differences worth mentioning. When activated, the “InPrivate” icon is more obvious than similar privacy tabs and icons in Mozilla and Safari and IE 8 brings better support for W3 Web standards.

For those of us who are looking for more privacy, it sounds like a great thing. No longer tracked by cookies! But what about the companies who use these tracking devices to improve ad-targeting? Well, click-throughs may see a drop. And the specifically-tailored ads directed towards you and based on your Web-searching habits will also be diminished — possibly hurting sales. This may not sound too pertinent as of now, but it makes me curious. How will marketers be able to target Web surfers? I can’t help but wonder what they’ll be forced to come out with next. Will it be more invasive than what we’re faced with now?

And what does this mean for you and your employees? If you don’t employ web filtering so employees are free to visit sites all over the web, are you going to be more concerned over what the guy in the corner desk is really looking at when you’re assuming he’s getting his work done?

Will it have an effect on office culture? Even if employees are free to browse the Web, will their YouTube downloads or (or whatever it is they may download!) hog noticeable amounts of bandwidth and get the bandwidth police after them? One more thing to constantly be looking out for?

As if that’s the biggest worry…

Yes, now you too can see what Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama are reading online!

First thought: shock. McCain is using the Internet?

Second thought: interesting…

According to Computerworld.com, the new Google project allows users to see the news stories and blog posts our candidates are reading. This is all launched with the cooperation of the campaign, of course, so I would suspect there is a bit of monitoring and “planning” surrounding which stories get read and when. Let’s face it, everything we see as the voter has been perfectly laid out for us. From what politicians say to what they wear, nothing is supposed to be random. Of course, a few things fall through the cracks… (President Bush’s comment about how “Wall Street got drunk?”)

I was so intrigued I went right over to see what the presidential hopefuls had on their reading lists. In case you haven’t already checked it out, McCain’s reading list includes the Wall Street Journal, Arizona Republic, Drudge Report, ESPN, Forbes and Fox News. Obama’s includes Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, ESPN, Talking Points Memo, Barack Obama Blog, and the Daily Show. There were also journalists’ blogs and news from both campaigns — a lot of interesting reading in one place.

What a great idea, Google. Pull in readership and get more people involved in following, what may prove to be, a history-making election. And as a user, why stop there? Add them as a Facebook friend.

In some ways, the entire campaign trail has made history already–as the most technologically-advanced campaigning ever. Google Reader has developed a feature highlighting both candidates and Obama has started text messaging his supporters.

The New York Times reported “the Obama campaign said that anyone who sent a text message of “VP” to a dedicated phone number would be among the first to learn the identity of his running mate.” Rather than announcing it at a news conference, the Obama campaign will send out the much anticipated running-mate news via text message. Not only that, NY Times also reported that a University of Michigan study done by graduate students found, “that those who received a reminder in a text message one day before an election were 4.2% more likely to vote.”

So maybe over-use of email and text messaging cuts back on human interaction. But I think this new wave of tech-campaigning will reach out to a broader audience, hopefully reminding (inspiring?) people to go out and vote.

At the very least, maybe all these tech upgrades will prevent future punch card voting problems.

According to the article, “Unlike McCain, many seniors surf the Web,” 35% of Americans over the age of 65 are online for things like emailing, driving directions and finding out useful information. Moreover, the project director, Susannah Fox, says “about three-quarters of white, college-educated men age over 65 use the Internet.” McCain falls right into this demographic, so why the lack in tech skills?

I can’t answer that for you. But I can tell you he’s not completely in the dark. At the Personal Democracy Forum in New York back in June, one of Senator McCain’s aides, Mark Soohoo, told the panel that, in fact, “John McCain is aware of the Internet.” Umm … I should hope so, Mark. How many people do you know who aren’t aware of the Internet?

He may not be able to use the Internet, but don’t worry, he’s aware of it existing. Phew. Just in time for the al-Qaida newscasts on the Web.

Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is scheduled for the end of May. A code freeze was implemented late last week, forcing programmers to scramble to make last-minute changes and stomp out any bugs that still exist.

Release candidates are typically the final stages of development before the new software is pushed out to users.

The latest beta version – Firefox Beta 3.5 – was released in early April and, in my experience, the results of that version weren’t exactly stellar.

Techworld notes that Mark Schroepfer, vice president of engineering, posted to Mozilla’s development blog this weekend, “The release candidates will move a little slower than beta.” The reason, according to Techworld, is because of “the need to account for more public feedback than with earlier builds.”

Or, as one friend posted succinctly to his Twitter stream: “Firefox 3 beta 5 = fail.”

I wonder if Schroepfer saw a lot of that and decided to urge his company into a more cautious route.

Personally, I’m still a Beta or two behind 5. But even the Firefox 3 beta that I use to surf the Interwebs daily is a little buggy. From time to time it freezes or just decides to shut down on its own. That said, I’m a lot happier with my latest version instead of Firefox 2, which routinely froze and forced me to reset my user preferences: Losing my bookmarks and history several times a day got old quickly.

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