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1. I wrote Keep My Opt-Outs. It has exactly the practical effect you're looking for with regard to DoubleClick and about 60 other ad networks _right now_. Insta

1. I wrote Keep My Opt-Outs. It has exactly the practical effect you're looking for with regard to DoubleClick and about 60 other ad networks _right now_. Installing it opts you out of interest based tracking in exactly the way that clicking the DNT box in Mozilla doesn't (yet): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhnjdplhmcnkiecampfdgfjilccfpfoe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhnjdplhmcnkiecamp... 2. Google's participating openly in http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/ http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/ to work out what DNT means in a detailed sense, so that when users send a header, either via a checkbox or via an extension, there's agreement about what the practical impact is. I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect much more than that right now.

csoghoian 15y ago
1. Keep my opt outs is not a serious privacy enhancing technology. If it were, it would be built into the browser by default, and enabled via a simple, easy to discover UI (or better, enabled by default). Keep My Opt Outs is largely political propaganda, or if you will, privacy theater. It gives your DC people something to talk about when they testify before Congress or the FTC. It allows them to say, "look, we do offer users the ability to opt out", while knowing that few users will seek it out and turn it on. Compare, for example, the 5% of Firefox users who have enabled DNT, vs. the 62k users of KMOO. That number of users is pathetic, given how many people use Chrome. 2. Since when does something need to have gone through the standards process for Google to ship it in Chrome? Consider, for example, what Adam Langley wrote when he added support for DNSSEC certificates to Chrome: "I'm also going to see how it goes for a while. The most likely outcome is that nobody uses [this feature] and I pull the code out in another year's time." See: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/16/dnssecchrome.html http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/16/dnssecchrome.html Google's approach to security (and in many other areas) is to iterate, quickly, see what works, and if it doesn't, kill it off. Likewise, Chrome supports an early draft of WebSockets. The spec isn't finalized yet though. Google added support to a draft spec, and then will update Chrome to the final spec once it is done. See: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/websocket-protocol-updated.html http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/websocket-protocol-updated....). It seems to only be in the area of privacy where Google wants to wait until technologies have gone through the slow standardization process. In the mean time, while you wait for things to work their way through the W3C, Google's ad business continues to build detailed behavioral profiles on Internet users. The longer the W3C takes, from Google's perspective, the better. Look - I get that it must be frustrating to be a privacy engineer working on Chrome, when upper management won't let you deploy serious privacy enhancing features to users. I get that it must be embarrassing to work on the only browser that doesn't support Do Not Track (usually, IE is last to the party). What I don't get, is why you tout features like KMOO and Google's involvement in the W3C process as though you expect them to be taken seriously. Google is not committed to enabling users to easily protect themselves from Google's widespread collection of their private data. To argue otherwise is foolish.
- StephenPurpura 15y ago
  DNT is privacy theater too. It encourages a business model shift and research into data mining that has the same effect as tracking but without an implementation that would violate DNT. DNT does not solve the problem of ubiquitous online tracking. That problem is most likely unsolvable. On my home network, Google, Facebook, and Twitter compete for the most web tracking next to my ISP's own capabilities. Traffic weighted, Facebook is now the leader in my household.

csoghoian 15y ago

1. Keep my opt outs is not a serious privacy enhancing technology. If it were, it would be built into the browser by default, and enabled via a simple, easy to discover UI (or better, enabled by default). Keep My Opt Outs is largely political propaganda, or if you will, privacy theater. It gives your DC people something to talk about when they testify before Congress or the FTC. It allows them to say, "look, we do offer users the ability to opt out", while knowing that few users will seek it out and turn it on. Compare, for example, the 5% of Firefox users who have enabled DNT, vs. the 62k users of KMOO. That number of users is pathetic, given how many people use Chrome. 2. Since when does something need to have gone through the standards process for Google to ship it in Chrome? Consider, for example, what Adam Langley wrote when he added support for DNSSEC certificates to Chrome: "I'm also going to see how it goes for a while. The most likely outcome is that nobody uses [this feature] and I pull the code out in another year's time." See: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/16/dnssecchrome.html http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/16/dnssecchrome.html Google's approach to security (and in many other areas) is to iterate, quickly, see what works, and if it doesn't, kill it off. Likewise, Chrome supports an early draft of WebSockets. The spec isn't finalized yet though. Google added support to a draft spec, and then will update Chrome to the final spec once it is done. See: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/websocket-protocol-updated.html http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/websocket-protocol-updated....). It seems to only be in the area of privacy where Google wants to wait until technologies have gone through the slow standardization process. In the mean time, while you wait for things to work their way through the W3C, Google's ad business continues to build detailed behavioral profiles on Internet users. The longer the W3C takes, from Google's perspective, the better. Look - I get that it must be frustrating to be a privacy engineer working on Chrome, when upper management won't let you deploy serious privacy enhancing features to users. I get that it must be embarrassing to work on the only browser that doesn't support Do Not Track (usually, IE is last to the party). What I don't get, is why you tout features like KMOO and Google's involvement in the W3C process as though you expect them to be taken seriously. Google is not committed to enabling users to easily protect themselves from Google's widespread collection of their private data. To argue otherwise is foolish.

StephenPurpura 15y ago
DNT is privacy theater too. It encourages a business model shift and research into data mining that has the same effect as tracking but without an implementation that would violate DNT. DNT does not solve the problem of ubiquitous online tracking. That problem is most likely unsolvable. On my home network, Google, Facebook, and Twitter compete for the most web tracking next to my ISP's own capabilities. Traffic weighted, Facebook is now the leader in my household.