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Report | Internet privacy | NAI — The World Privacy Forum published a new report today, The Network Advertising Initiative: Failing at Consumer Protection and at Self-Regulation. The report is an in-depth analysis of the history and current operations of the National Advertising Initiative (NAI) self-regulatory agreement. The NAI was created to protect consumers’ online privacy in the behavioral advertising arena. The report finds that the NAI has failed. The report discusses the failure of the NAI opt-out cookie, the uses of persistent consumer tracking technologies that go beyond cookies, such as Flash cookies, browser cache cookies, XML super cookies, and other issues. The report also discusses the practice of re-setting cookies after cookie deletion. The report gathers the details of the difficult membership history of the NAI, as well as the enforcement history of TRUSTe regarding NAI.

Consumer tips on managing cookies — Some computer cookies are harmless, but others can track your moves across many Web sites, eventually building a detailed history of your preferences. The good news is that you can manage these persistent tracking cookies to some degree. To do this, you need to know how to say no to the third party tracking cookies you don’t want while still allowing yourself to say yes to the cookies you do want. There are several ways to do this. One way is to download “opt-out cookies.” Another way is to use your browser’s cookie management tools to manage your cookies. Another method is to regularly delete unwanted cookies. In some cases, you can stop tracking through account preferences at some web sites.