High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been involved in oversight of the behavioral targeting techniques used by online advertisers since the mid-1990s. These techniques, known initially as online profiling, and now known as behavioral targeting, are used to target online behavioral advertising (OBA) to consumers based on preferences inferred from their online behavior. During the period from the mid-1990s to the present, the FTC held a series of workshops, published a number of reports and gave numerous recommendations regarding both industry self-regulation and Federal regulation of OBA. In late 2010, the FTC proposed a legislative framework for US consumer data privacy including a proposal for a “Do Not Track” mechanism. In 2011, a number of bills were introduced into the United States Congress that would regulate OBA.