Mozilla's plan to prevent third-party cookies by default is on pause. The company this week decided to test blocking third-party cookies by requiring users to enable the feature -- rather than automatically opting them in.

"There are many conflicting claims about how this patch will affect the Internet," wrote Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla.org and CTO and senior VP of engineering at Mozilla, in a post on his personal blog today.

"Why debate in theory what we can measure in practice? We are going to find out more and adjust course as needed. This is the essence of the release test cycle."

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The Federal Trade Commission continues its crackdown on the consumer data industry. The agency today announced it sent warning letters to ten data brokers suggesting they may be in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The effort appears to be the result of an undercover data shopping operation.

The FTC "test-shopped" for data from the companies and determined that they may be in violation of the FCRA, according to the missives, dated last week.

The firms in the crosshairs are ConsumerBase, Brokers Data, US Data Corporation, Crimcheck.com, 4Nannies, U.S. Information Search, People Search Now, Case Breakers and USA People Search. The tenth company was not named by the FTC.

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Don't like ads on your phone? Two tech companies allied with the online ad industry are offering new ways to control them.

Evidon, one of two providers of the Ad Choices icon -- the tiny blue symbol shown in behaviorally-targeted display ads -- has just begun delivering the icon and the opt-out system behind it into mobile app ads served by the Jumptap and Tapad networks. More mobile app ad partners are lined up to do the same.

Meanwhile, Evidon's rival Truste has allowed people to opt-out of behavioral ad targeting in mobile apps since June 2012. It recently upgraded its system to work when in-app ads are purchased through real time bidding, so advertisers bidding on ad placements know before they make a bid that a user cannot be targeted using behavioral data. Mobile ad exchange Nexage and Tapad are initial partners.

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The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled in a case against craft supplies purveyor Michaels Stores, deciding that ZIP codes are personally-identifiable information.

It's become commonplace for bricks-and-mortar merchants to ask shoppers for their ZIP code when they pay with a credit card (and even sometimes when they use cash). The court decision, and others like it on the books in California and a handful of other states, have some privacy lawyers suggesting retailers change their ways when it comes to collecting ZIP codes.

The Massachusetts court last month ruled in the class action suit that collecting personal information when conducting a credit card transaction violates state privacy law. In this case, it wasn't about data security or fraud. Rather, plaintiff Melissa Tyler argued that when Michaels Stores matched her ZIP code collected by a cashier with other data to retrieve her mailing address and phone number to target marketing communications to her, it violated an existing law prohibiting entities from requiring personal information when paying with a credit card.

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Google again has received a wrist slap from European Union privacy leaders, though whether the latest moves are a real threat to the company remains to be seen. At issue is a sweeping change Google made to its product privacy policies in March 2012, collapsing sixty of those policies into one.

A task force under the Article 29 Working Party, a body which encompasses a data protection authority from each EU member state, has "launched actions" targeting Google for failing to make changes requested by the party in October.

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The World Wide Web Consortium, an international group of academics, consumer advocates, and representatives from business, has among its mandates one of acute interest to the online ad industry: how web sites should respond when a user says he'd rather not be tracked, a so-called "Do Not Track" standard.

But that narrow goal has proven nettlesome to the point of distraction. Rather than moving close to a solution, this non-governmental body is taking the concept of government sausage-making to a whole new level.

Granted, its entire process was thrown into flux when Microsoft introduced its default do not track (DNT) system in its latest version of Internet Explorer late last year. Redmond decided that the best way to serve consumers was to turn off tracking by default--and allow them to elect to be tracked by third-parties if they wanted to.

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The U.S. Postal Service doesn't have the legal authority to cut Saturday mail delivery as Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has said it will do, the Government Accountability Office said today.

The service is bound by law to deliver mail six days a week, and is incorrect that a temporary measure recently used to fund U.S. government operations released it from that requirement, the GAO said in a letter to Representative Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, who requested that the watchdog agency look at the matter.

Some weekly magazine publishers have been exploring alternate delivery methods so the plan to cut Saturday mail delivery wouldn't put another day in between them and their readers.

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Congress is starting to rethink a 1986 law that has been a thorn in Google's side. At issue is how easy it is for governments to obtain what Google and others consider private documents and communications such as emails, private blog posts or documents saved on remote servers, "the cloud."

In January, Google publicly lamented that data requests from governments around the world are on the rise.

The firm was the only corporate witness today at a hearing on the issue held this morning by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations. Other witnesses during the brief hearing were from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice and George Washington University Law School.

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Advertising delivered through social media or on mobile phones needs to provide clear disclosures and abide by the same requirements that apply to newspaper and television messages, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said.

"Advertisers are responsible for ensuring that their messages are truthful and not deceptive," the agency said in updated guidelines issued today. It said it would take enforcement action against companies that violate consumer protection laws.

The guidelines aim to provide practical tools for advertising on smartphones or through social media like Facebook or Twitter services. The suggestions update the "Dot Com Disclosures" guidance the FTC issued in 2000 to cover the rise of online shopping.

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The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly chosen a Barack Obama campaign insider, FTC Commissioner Edith Ramirez, as its next chairman. Ms. Ramirez has a background steeped in antitrust and competition issues, and served as director of Latino outreach for the Obama 2008 campaign. She has indicated support of comprehensive privacy legislation and robust rules around children's data collection.

In addition, Ms. Ramirez, a bilingual Mexican-American, can be expected to champion globalized approaches to consumer privacy protection and to clamp down on fraudulent marketing aimed at Spanish-speaking communities.

Many believed fellow Commissioner Julie

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