Yahoo Goes-DO NOT TRACK

Yahoo websites worldwide will comply with users “do not track” settings starting later this year, Yahoo announced Wednesday.

Most major browsers are now able to send a message to sites visited, indicating whether users want their surfing behavior to be tracked by cookies for the purposes of displaying personalized ads. In February the last major hold-out, Google, announced that its Chrome browser will include do-not-track support by the end of the year.

That message, an HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) header accompanying a request to display a Web page, avoids the awkward paradox that to store a visitor’s preference not to be tracked by cookies, sites had to store a cookie containing that preference, and provides a consistent way to store and indicate such preferences across all Web sites that respect the do-not-track header.

Support for the do-not-track header has been in the works since last year, Yahoo said. All Yahoo sites will respect the header, including those of Right Media and Interclick, two Yahoo subsidiaries specializing in behavioral or data-driven advertising, the company said.

The company’s announcement comes the same day that the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade is set to hold a hearing on balancing privacy and innovation, and in the same week that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission called for creation of a do-not-track tool for Internet users.

In a statement announcing its plans for allowing visitors to opt out of tracking, Yahoo maintained that allowing advertisers to regulate themselves was the best and quickest way to introduce protections to the market place without sacrificing innovation or value creation.

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Comcast Starts IPv6 Network Rollout

Comcast has begun the production rollout of its new IPv6 service, with 100 customers upgraded in San Francisco’s East Bay in one week.

IPv6 is an upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol, which is called IPv4. IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme that can support billions of devices connected directly to the Internet at faster speeds and lower cost than IPv4, which is running out of addresses.

Comcast began an IPv6 trial 18 months ago and is a leader in the deployment of IPv6-based services among U.S. ISPs.

The production rollout began on Oct. 31. It offers customers “native dual-stack service,” which means Comcast is supporting both IPv6 and IPv4 services.

The initial subscribers of Comcast’s production-quality IPv6 service have stand-alone computers running Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista or Apple Mac OS X that are connected directly to a Comcast cable modem. Comcast plans to support IPv6 for customers with home routers at a later date.

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