Microsoft's next-generation Web browser will see a release candidate "early next year," and it will include a unique, just announced privacy protection called Tracking Protection. The feature will give users control over which sites can send and receive data from their browser, which might arouse the ire of some Web marketing operations that use browser tracking as part of their business model.

Most users don't realize that when they visit a Web site, the content served to their browser often doesn't all come from that site, but from a number of others, often serving a single pixel, sometimes called a "beacon," with the intent of keeping tabs on the users' surfing history. IE9's Tracking Protection will allow users to subscribe to lists of that selectively block these tracking sites. By default, the feature is not enabled, but presumably Microsoft will make clear to users how they can opt in.

Microsoft corporate vice president Dean Hachamovitch and chief privacy officer Peter Cullen spoke in a webcast for the press today explaining the new feature. "This approach empowers consumers and complements many of the other ideas under discussion," Hachamovitch said.

In a blog post, Hachamovitch said "a Tracking Protection List (TPL) contains Web addresses (like msdn.com) that the browser will visit (or 'call') only if the consumer visits them directly by clicking on a link or typing their address. By limiting the calls to these Web sites and resources from other Web pages, the TPL limits the information these other sites can collect."

The feature goes beyond cookie tracking protection, which users can already control in all browsers, and it works separately and complementarily with Internet Explorer's existing InPrivate filtering, which protects based on "frequency heuristics to build a list as a consumer browses sites," as opposed to the curated lists used by Tracking Protection.

The news comes several days after a Federal Trade Commission report addressing the issue of Internet tracking. The report recommended "more effective technologies for consumer control" via "a browser-based mechanism through which consumers could make persistent choices" regarding tracking. Said Cullen, "The FTC framework was really a broad framework; one that invited discussion. We think the browser is an important part of providing control." Cullen also fended off questions about advertisers' potential displeasure by stating that the feature's white-listing capability offered "enormous opportunity for the industry."

"There was, and remains, good dialogue across the company and with industry representatives on the user experience as well as the potential impact on advertisers and customers," Microsoft said in a statement.

The lists will not be created or hosted by Microsoft, but likely by consumer protection organizations or interested enthusiasts. Once downloaded to a user's PC, they will be automatically updated via a subscription mechanism. The Tracking Protection feature won't work with plug-in content such as Adobe Flash content, as those are basically a separate app from the browser.

Hachamovitch summed up the new privacy tool as follows: "Tracking protection puts people in control, enabling consumers to indicate what Web sites they'd prefer to not exchange information with." It will be included with the release candidate of Internet Explorer 9, which is expected to ship early in 2011.