In a nod to user privacy, Twitter announced Thursday that it would support the Do Not Track privacy feature in Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
At an Internet Week panel in New York City, Ed Felton, the Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, first publicized the decision. Soon after, Twitter confirmed the news with a tweet. The Do Not Track feature allows users to opt-out of third-party tracking.
In a statement, Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner said, “Twitter now supports Do Not Track. We applaud the FTC’s leadership on Do Not Track, and are excited to provide the benefits of Do Not Track.”
The company declined to elaborate on whether it would support Do Not Track on other browsers that currently support the initiative. But it seems likely that given its decision to implement the feature on Firefox, Twitter’s support will expand to other browsers.
Currently, Internet Explorer and Safari support some kind of Do Not Track control. Google has said that it will roll out a Do Not Track feature for its Chrome browser by the end of the year. In March, Yahoo announced its support for Do Not Track, as has AOL. But Facebook, one of the Web’s biggest collectors of data, has not put its weight behind the effort. Given the amount of user data it is in a position to collect, Twitter’s move is especially significant.
