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> Apparently turning on "Do Not Track" has long been known as a way to single you out on the web. You'll help them narrow you down by about three orders of magn

by gkya 9y ago

> Apparently turning on "Do Not Track" has long been known as a way to single you out on the web. You'll help them narrow you down by about three orders of magnitude. It was a silly idea to begin with. Wouldn't that be solved if FF turned DNT on by default?

mook 9y ago
It would also make it even more useless. IE originally had it default on; they turned it off after people complained that it meant advertisers wouldn't honour it anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer_10_default_setting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer...
- gkya 9y ago
  Well it was useless to begin with anyways, as it's just kindly asking ad-publishers to please not track you, which is the closest thing we have to the platonic idea of naivety.
  - yborg 9y ago
    It's not useless in the context of a legislative requirement to honor it, which was the original goal that DNT was supposed to drive to. Since we now have pretty much 100% regulatory capture in the Internet space that of course is now dead.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > It's not useless in the context of a legislative requirement to honor it, which was the original goal that DNT was supposed to drive to. Since we now have pretty much 100% regulatory capture in the Internet space that of course is now dead. It was never really likely to happen, especially when even advocacy groups like the EFF opposed legislative approaches to enforcing DNT.
yborg 9y ago
It might actually be useful to randomly turn it on and off per request...
Sylos 9y ago
DNT is meant as an explicit opt-out. A unified way for users to expressly say that they do not want to be tracked, if possible. Users actually going into the settings and flipping that switch makes it clear that it's their request and therefore could have given it legal bearing. (Exceptions from that for functionality that requires tracking, like online shopping, would be given implicitely by using that functionality.) Unfortunately, Google, Facebook and Microsoft managed to kill that effort off. Microsoft by doing exactly that, they default-enabled it in Internet Explorer, taking away any legal bearing. And Google+Facebook came out saying they don't give a fuck, they'll track users anyways, and then with something around 2/3 of all bigger webpages having Google Analytics deployed and some other ridiculous percentage having a Facebook Like-Button, there were essentially no webpages left that could have come out and said that they want to respect it in some fashion.

by gkya 9y ago

mook 9y ago

It would also make it even more useless. IE originally had it default on; they turned it off after people complained that it meant advertisers wouldn't honour it anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer_10_default_setting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer...

gkya 9y ago
Well it was useless to begin with anyways, as it's just kindly asking ad-publishers to please not track you, which is the closest thing we have to the platonic idea of naivety.
- yborg 9y ago
  It's not useless in the context of a legislative requirement to honor it, which was the original goal that DNT was supposed to drive to. Since we now have pretty much 100% regulatory capture in the Internet space that of course is now dead.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > It's not useless in the context of a legislative requirement to honor it, which was the original goal that DNT was supposed to drive to. Since we now have pretty much 100% regulatory capture in the Internet space that of course is now dead. It was never really likely to happen, especially when even advocacy groups like the EFF opposed legislative approaches to enforcing DNT.

yborg 9y ago

It might actually be useful to randomly turn it on and off per request...

Sylos 9y ago

DNT is meant as an explicit opt-out. A unified way for users to expressly say that they do not want to be tracked, if possible. Users actually going into the settings and flipping that switch makes it clear that it's their request and therefore could have given it legal bearing. (Exceptions from that for functionality that requires tracking, like online shopping, would be given implicitely by using that functionality.) Unfortunately, Google, Facebook and Microsoft managed to kill that effort off. Microsoft by doing exactly that, they default-enabled it in Internet Explorer, taking away any legal bearing. And Google+Facebook came out saying they don't give a fuck, they'll track users anyways, and then with something around 2/3 of all bigger webpages having Google Analytics deployed and some other ridiculous percentage having a Facebook Like-Button, there were essentially no webpages left that could have come out and said that they want to respect it in some fashion.