Microsoft has announced today that the future of IE9 will allow users to determine the monitoring of their movement on the internet, in response to the increasing calls of customer control on the practice.

The move has been appreciated by many privacy experts. Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a digital rights advocacy group in Washington endorses the move as a necessary development.

Dean Hachamovitch, head IE development, Microsoft, point out that these skin tone, dubbed ‘Tracking Protection’ will first appearance with the IE9 let go early next year. “Tracking Protection” would stay put an opt-in facility, and turned off by default. It will rely on the publishing of lists which block third party websites and content.

According to Hachamovitch, any individual or organization can create Tracking Protection lists, used by IE9 to puzzle unwanted tracking. He added that consumers can subscribe or unsubscribe to multiple lists. Hachamovitch points out that the browser will block out all third party sites, or addresses in the list, while allowing customers to choose which sites to send the information to. Users can add sites to the list, by the simple click of a page. The lists can also include exclusions to the blocked sites.

Considering that early browser releases like IE9 beta and RC build are used by early adopters of the technology, the first few lists are bound to come from enthusisastic followers of new technology.

Brookman mentioned that a number of people including the CDT and Electronics Frontier Foundation (EFF), a consumer protection group, will look to utilize this option.

Hachamovitch chose to compare the Tracking Protection’s list with the ‘Do Not Call’ list for telephone calling systems and labeled it a web version for browsers. He added that it complements other versions being discussed for browser controls of Do Not Track.

Jonathon Mayer, a grad student at Stanford and one of the principal researchers working on a Do Not Track technology, emphasized that the feature remains complementary, and not a substitute for Do Not Track. Also, Tracking Protection does not in any way replace InPrivate filtering, another privacy feature in the IE8.

Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist, announced that the company had been in talks with FTC (Federal trade Commission) and European Union privacy advocates and added that the feature was not a result of regulator’s worries. He, however, sidestepped when questioned of its impact on advertisers. Advertisers depend on tracking mechanism to serve targeted Web Ads. Microsoft will collect feedback from users, advertisers and others after the debut of the feature in the release candidate; then accordingly undertake modification.

The CDT has led the call to Microsoft and others to create anti-tracking technology for a long time, especially before the launch of IE8 in 2006. However, Microsoft dropped the thought after some consideration. The recent series of news in the Wall Street Journal seem to have prompted action from the FTC, Microsoft and others.