Web Firms to Adopt 'No Track' Button.

Support for a do-not-track button by a coalition of Internet giants, including Google, has emerged as part of the White House's call for Congress to pass a "privacy bill of rights" giving people more control over personal data collected about them.

Google and others had been working around the privacy settings of millions of people that use Apple's Safari web browser on their iPhones and computers. The code Google was using to bypass the privacy settings was noticed by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, CS/law student with Professor John Mitchell.

Google disabled its code after being contacted by the Wall Street Journal. A Google spokesman said that

Our updated Privacy Policy will make our privacy practices easier to understand, and it reflects our desire to create a seamless experience for our signed-in users.

See the Wall Street Journal Technology articles on Google's iPhone tracking and No-Track Button for details.