Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Google joins the privacy fray, offers up extension that blacklists tracking cookies

Hot on the heels of Mozilla's proposed Do Not Track solution, Google has launched Keep My Opt-Outs, an extension that blocks tracking cookies from targeted advertising providers.

The extension, which is simply a free download from the Chrome Web Store, takes an utterly brute-force approach to the problem. It has a blacklist of known targeted advertisers, and it simply blocks any cookies originating from their domains. The blacklist will be regularly updated as advertising companies adopt the industry's self-regulated privacy standards.

Read more: DownloadSquad