Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Al Franken (D-MN) and Joe Barton (R-TX) have sent a letter to the World Wide Web Consortium criticizing its approach to its do-not-track (DNT) standards, MediaPost reports. In the letter, the senators contend that the DNT definition will not protect users’ privacy and that “first-party” sites should not be able to collect data from users who opted out of web tracking. “We believe that both first and third parties should be held to high standards that respect privacy and promote competition online,” they write. Additionally, the different standards for first and third parties “gives certain companies … an exemption from what could serve as an important consumer protection and an unfair advantage over companies that better honor consumer rights and expectations.”
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