DuckDuckGo bill in US requires sites to respect Do Not Track option

Search company DuckDuckGo wants to make the Do Not Track option in browsers a law in the United States. It has written a bill for that. So far, there are no MPs who openly support the proposal.

Under the bill, third parties are no longer allowed to track users if they have Do Not Track enabled in the browser, DuckDuckGo says. In addition, website owners are only allowed to use data in a way ‘that the user expects’. For example, Facebook is not allowed to use data from its subsidiary WhatsApp for advertisements in Instagram, according to the search company. DuckDuckGo has put the proposal online.

Currently, little is happening with the Do Not Track option in browsers, as sites don’t respect the choice and still track users. Despite that, 75 million internet users have turned on the option. Apple has removed Do Not Track from its Safari browser because websites use it for fingerprinting to track users.

The bill has not yet received support from politicians in the US, reports The Verge. DuckDuckGo hopes public opinion will persuade politicians to turn this into law. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that focuses on privacy and opposes tracking, giving it an interest in such a law. Google, Facebook and Amazon, among others, track users for targeted advertisements.