The Sydney Morning Herald takes a stand against Internet tracking in an editorial on cookies as a means to mass surveillance. "Those innocuous-sounding cookies and beacons," the editorial reads, "can quickly and easily build comprehensive consumer profiles. Such specific information is a potential goldmine." Internet laws are lagging behind, according to the newspaper's editors, who suggest that, as in the case with a recent cry for better privacy policies on social networks, "Web sites that extract user information should likewise offer clear, simple instructions on opting out. That way, people who consider advertising an essential part of making informed consumer choices can benefit from precision marketing, and everyone else can simply switch the trackers off."
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