In what is considered to be a monumental blow for privacy advocates, The Federal Communications Commission ruled on Friday that online companies such as Google and Facebook could still continue to track the behavior and movement of their users.

Privacy advocate groups had gone to the FCC to get them to regulate and stop the tracking behavior but it was to no avail as the FCC came down on the side of the online giants, according to The Washington Post. In related rulings over the past summer, the FCC can regulate Internet providers but can do nothing currently about regulating individual online companies.

The activist group, Consumer Watch, had made a formal petition to the FCC back in June that would enable a new “Do Not Track” technology to be put into place on the World Wide Web. It would allow visitors to a site to simply click onto a Do Not Track button at the site and, supposedly, that would prevent a site from tracking them. While many websites honor privacy requests, most don’t. Especially the giants like Facebook and Google who sell consumer and user information as a matter of course and as a matter of business practices.

The FCC has become quite aggressive in its campaigns against Internet providers who don’t protect their users privacy. Cox Communications received notice of an FCC fine in the amount of $595,000 on Thursday for failing to protect customer data from being hacked into. The FCC has also gone after AT&T and others for such breaches.

Establishing a nationwide, and eventual universal, Do Not Track standard would not allow any online operations to track and collect information on visitors and users. Tracking software and technology grows more sophisticated by the day so advocates believe it would be almost impossible for a Do Not Track standard to be implemented. Recently, a U.S. Senator and two Congressional Reps have joined in the fray. They would like Congress to look into such privacy protections and determine if a national standard would be appropriate.