From the article: "As marketers, browser makers and government regulators spar over efforts to let consumers limit custom advertising online, a new study suggests that Americans are largely unaware of what that means and have a strong aversion to being tracked online.
The majority of Americans surveyed by researchers at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, which is part of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, do not want information collected at all about which Web sites they visit, according to the study, which is to be released at the Amsterdam Privacy Conference on Monday.
Most of them said they did not find online advertisements useful. And nearly 90 percent said they had never heard of a proposal by the Federal Trade Commission, known as a “do not track” mechanism, that would let users opt out of having their personal data collected for the purposes of serving tailored advertisements." Read more
See also
Hoofnagle, Chris Jay, Urban, Jennifer M., and Su Li. "Privacy and Modern Advertising: Most US Internet Users Want 'Do Not Track' to Stop Collection of Data about their Online Activities." Paper presented at the Amsterdam Privacy Conference, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, October 8, 2012.
