Do Not Track

An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted—the trouble is ,no one knows which half. In the internet age,at least in theory,this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for,click on and say online,companies can aim "behavioural" ads at those most likely to buy.

有句老话说，一半的广告预算都浪费了—问题是，没有人知道是哪一半。在互联网时代，至少在理论上，这部分将会被大幅度减少。通过观察人们搜索什么，点击什么和在网上发表什么，企业可以定目标将这些有行为性的广告放置于最优可能购买的地方。

In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fine-grained information: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioural ads? Or should they have explicit permission?

在过去的几周里，一场争论说明了这种精细信息对广告商的价值:广告商是否应该认为人们乐于被追踪并且被推送行为广告?或者他们是否应该有明确的许可？

In December 2010 America's Federal Trade Commission(FTC) proposed adding a "do not track"(DNT) option to internet browsers,so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari both offer DNT;Google's chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and the Digital Advertising Aliance(DAA) agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests.

在2010年十月，美国联邦贸易委员会赞成增加一项在互联网浏览上"不允许追踪"的选项,以至于用户可以告诉广告商他们不愿意被追踪。微软IE浏览器和苹果的Safara都提供了DNT,谷歌chrome浏览器在当年也同样提供了DNT。二月，联邦贸易委员会和数字广告联盟（DAA）就该行业快速响应DNT要求达成共识。

On May 31st Microsoft set off the row. It said that Internet Explorer 10,the version due to appear with windows 8,would have DNT as a default.

在5月31日，微软掀起了这场风波。微软声称将与windows8一起发布的IE10浏览器将会把"禁止追踪"设置为默认选项。

Advertisers are horrified. Human nature being what it is,most people stick with default setting. Few switch DNT on now,but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob liodice, the chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect information about their preferences. People will not get fewer ads,he says. "They'll get less meaningful,less targeted ads."

广告商们开始恐惧了.大多数人都坚持着默认设定，这是人的本性使然。现在很少有人打开"禁止追踪"选项,但如果追踪选项处于关闭状态，它就会一直处于关闭状态。全美广告协会首席执行官鲍勃说，如果广告行业不能收集关于消费者偏爱的信息，那么消费者的情况将会更槽。他说，人们得到的广告不会减少。"他们将获得更没有意义，更没有针对性的广告。"

It is not yet clear how advertisers will response. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking,although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone really objects to behavioural ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft's default,some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway.

广告商们将会如何回应仍然还不清楚。尽管一些公司已经承诺这样做，但得到禁止追踪的指令还是不能迫使其停止追踪。无法辨别某个人是否真的反对行为广告或者是否他们坚持微软的默认设置，他们可能会忽略禁止追踪的信号继续进行。

Also unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. after all,it has an ad business too,which it says will comply with DNT requests,though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google,which relies almost wholly on advertising,it has chosen an indirect methods: there is no guarantee that DNT by default will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for windows 8—though the firm has compared some of its other products favourably with Google's on that count before. Brendon Lynch，Microsoft's chief privacy officer,blogged: "We believe consumers should have more control."Could it really be that simple?

同样不清楚的是为什么微软要独自这样做。毕竟，它也是有广告业务的，而且它声称相应的业务也会遵从禁止追踪的要求,虽然目前仍在研究如何做到这一点。如果它是在打击几乎完全依赖广告业务的谷歌，那么它选择了一个不直接的方法：因为没人能保证默认禁止追踪将会成为常规。禁止追踪似乎对于windows 8不是一个很明显的大售卖点—尽管在那之前，微软公司已经顺利地和谷歌对比了一些其他的产品.微软首席隐私官布伦丹·林奇在博客中表示:"我们认为消费者应该有更多的控制权。"事情真的有那么简单吗？