Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission reprimanded Internet companies for the fact that they had failed to explain to users what kind of information they usually gathered on them and the way that info was used in advertising purposes.

Nevertheless, for the time being, the commission remains tributary to its previous opinion that the Internet industry can alter its privacy policy voluntarily, but the tone used by the FTC and the comments made by several of its members suggested that the agency was planning to increase regulation or ask the Congress to put forward stricter Internet privacy rules in case the industry failed to solve the issue brought to its attention in a timely manner.

Jules Polonetsky, co-chairman of the trade group Future of Privacy Forum, stated that many had expressed their concern that the commission might come to take back its support for self-regulation in the Internet industry

The FTC issued an update to the voluntary guidelines it originally released back in 2007, which deal with what the commission calls online behavioral advertising, mainly advertisements that draw on past patterns of behavior.

The update hinted at the fact that websites should better explain the way they collect and use data in a user-friendly manner, reasoning that it had discovered that many sites had failed to live up to those expectations.

Eileen Harrington, the acting director of the commission’s bureau of consumer protection, stated in a interview on Thursday that the majority of websites chose to explain the above-mentioned issues intricate and difficult to make out privacy policies.