> From the IWeek article:
The FTC and 37 states have taken action only against Google, likely because Google's privacy policy stated that the company would comply with Safari users' tracking choices.
> legitimate companies
Google is both an advertising company and a product company (and big and famous), and also uses Don't Evil as part of its brand; this why it has a user-friendly privacy policy to keep it honest.
B2B advertising companies, which is, like, all of them, have no need for privacy policies, unless their customers (website owners) demand them. And what website needs to have a privacy policy that impresses users? Googe, Facebook, sure, but cheapdiamondsonline.com?
There is at least one company doing this. I sat through a pitch a couple of weeks ago from a company touting that as their primary function. They couldn't explain how or if they dealt with users that don't have static ips, use proxies, are NATed or any other technical issue of course but it was a sales guy with a deck so not too surprising. I've asked my partner that was also on the call, and was actively being solicited, for the name and will update this post if he gets back to me tonight.
After the Facebook Beacon[1] and Google Safari cookie control bypass[2] settlements I would have thought legitimate companies would be a little reluctant to push the envelope so far as to explicitly bypass privacy controls.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon
[2] http://www.informationweek.com/security/compliance/google-se...