Updated 3.30pm

TWITTER HAS BECOME the first social networking site to adopt a Do Not Track privacy option, which will stop the company from collecting page-visit information for users who don’t wish their data to be saved.

Twitter tweeted yesterday that the US Federal Trade Commission’s CTO Ed Felten had made the announcement at a privacy panel in New York, and said that it ‘applauds the FTC’s leadership on DNT’.

Twitter, along with the likes of Facebook and Google, currently tracks its users’ online behaviour through sites that feature Twitter ‘follow’ buttons. The implementation of this new privacy feature means that Twitter users now have the option to request that this tracking be turned off, and that this request will be honoured.

The feature, which was launched last year by Mozilla,  allows users to request that their information is not tracked. According to Mozilla:

Do Not Track is a feature in Firefox that allows you to let a website know you would like to opt-out of third-party tracking for purposes including behavioral advertising…. If you request that websites Do Not Track you, and the sites respect your privacy preferences, you will see more generic ads in place of behavioral ads.

Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari all include the Do Not Track option, while Google says it will become a feature of its Chrome browser later in the year reports Reuters.

Twitter has also announced that it’s using information collected from around the web to recommend ‘tailored suggestions’ to users.

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