Google's Cookies, A .Gov Model?

Google set a precedent for the use of cookies - website tracking devices - that the White House should follow, some privacy advocates said, reacting to the news that the search giant will now allow site owners and users to opt out of its service that tracks traffic on websites.

"We think that they should allow agencies to do analytics with an opt-out," said Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer of the Center for Technology and Democracy.

Currently, all cookies are banned on .gov sites in accordance with a 2000 federal rule that, for privacy reasons, prohibits the use of technologies that track user activity. The White House currently is considering lifting the ban and a new policy is expected next month.

Many federal web managers and even civil liberties groups say the ban is outdated now that many commercial sites use cookies for customer service purposes. The technology can help improve citizen services by customizing users' online experiences, they argue. Cookies "remember" user settings and measure user behavior, such as frequent trips to a certain page on a site. By monitoring such information, web managers would be able, for example, to put links to popular pages at the top of their homepages for easy access.

A post on Google Analytics' blog states, "The opt-out provides users with a choice of whether information about website visits is collected by Google Analytics. The add-on stops data from being sent from your computer when you visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage. . .we're also releasing new functionality for website owners to provide an additional level of privacy for visitors to their sites by offering an option to anonymize (IP) address information sent to Google."

Google uses IP addresses, the locations of devices connected to a network, of visitors to provide general geographic reporting.