Movement to enable Web surfers to avoid tracking

As debate rages over the Federal Trade Commission's proposed privacy system for online consumers, a number of organizations are developing technological means of enabling surfers to exercise greater control over the information collected about their Internet behavior.

The regulatory plan and new tools come at a point of growing distress over the amount of data that marketing and tracking companies often surreptitiously collect about online activity, and the increasingly sophisticated technology they have for doing so. "Today, there's basically no practical choice that the average Internet user can make that would give them privacy online," said Peter Eckersley, a senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group in San Francisco. The efforts to change that fall into two main approaches, each with its own strengths and weakness from a user privacy perspective - and very different consequences for the online businesses that depend on advertising revenue.