Advertisers across the web world have decided to ignore the Microsoft’s ‘Do Not Track’ plans for Internet Explorer 10. Microsoft has announced their plans to launch the IE 10 browser with ad targeting and tracking turned off by default, so as to help users safeguard their online identity and privacy.

In a statement given by The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), which represents 5,000 major advertisers said that the DAA does not require companies to honor DNT signals fixed by the browser manufacturers. Moreover, it believes that the Microsoft’s browser settings are not an appropriate standard for providing consumer choice, as machine-driven do not track does not represent user choice.

Another opponent of Microsoft’s decision of keeping the Do Not Track feature is the Association of National Advertisers who sent a letter to Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer stating,

“Apache, a provider of software that supports nearly two-thirds of Internet web site offerings, has designed its software to ignore the ‘do-not-track’ setting if the browser reaching it is Internet Explorer 10, describing Microsoft’s actions as a “deliberate abuse of open standards.”

Advertisers may not agree with Microsoft’s decisions, but some studies conducted by researchers at Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, which is part of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that majority of Americans do not prefer information collected at all about sites they visit. In a poll of 1,203 adults, where they were asked “If a ‘do not track’ option were available to you when browsing the Internet, which of the following things would you most want it to do?”, around 60 percent user said to “prevent Web sites from collecting information” about them and they are not sure that marketers are collecting information about their online behavior.

It’s not only Microsoft doing efforts to protect user privacy, as Google is also adding the Don Not Track feature in the next version of Chrome. This move is to honor their agreement with the Obama Administration early this year to add a DNT tool to their browser. A few months back, Yahoo said it will deploy the support of Do Not Track on all their web projects by this year to meet a growing concern with respect to user data privacy.

No matter if advertisers are ignoring the efforts by browser makers, it is quite clear that no one wants to be tracked. After all, it just feels creepy! Consumers expect privacy, while for advertisers Do Not Track means that they won’t know your web activity so they can’t push you annoying ads based on what you’ve been browsing on the internet. So, what’s required is the privacy that consumers expect and the type of useful marketing knowledge that advertisers can extract from customer behavior.