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Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

windowsreport.com

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Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#21

Post by arp242 »

So GPC is basically the same as DNT, but according to [1], "GPC improves on DNT in several ways:"

- Legal backing: Unlike DNT, GPC is supported by more laws, like the CCPA, which requires businesses to honor these signals.

- Targeted approach: While DNT broadly addressed tracking, GPC focuses specifically on stopping data from being sold or shared, making it more relevant to today’s privacy needs.

- Better adoption potential: GPC was created with input from regulators, privacy advocates, and industry leaders, to align it with existing laws and address previous gaps in functionality.

But essentially, it's more or less the same.

So it seems it's less "Firefox removes DNT" and more "Firefox deprecates earlier ineffective version of GPC".

[1]: https://www.cookiebot.com/en/global-privacy-control/

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#22

Post by n144q »

About time. It has never achieved anything meaningful for protecting your privacy, if not helping the opposite by providing yet another signal to help uniquely identify a user and improve tracking.

Although, anti-tracking in general is basically fighting a losing battle. Go to https://amiunique.org/ and you'll see why. I use Firefox with all possible protection mechanics -- "strict" tracking protection mode, uBlock origin, yet I cannot escape first-party tracking.

One striking example: These days browsers may expose how many cores your device's CPU has to websites. That alone could eliminate 80%-90% of users. Combined with user agent, IP, language etc you are pretty much uniquely identified.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/h...

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#23

Post by registeredcorn »

> However, as we approach 2025, with growing concerns about online privacy and data protection, Mozilla believes that DNT is no longer an effective privacy measure. Many websites ignore the DNT signal. Therefore, Mozilla has removed the DNT signal from Firefox version 135.

This is spurious reasoning. "Many" is neither a percentage, or a basis for justification. Many people ignore speed limits - so what?

>The company recommends using the Global Privacy Control setting as an alternative to prevent websites from tracking user data.

>If you wish to ask websites to respect your privacy, [...] [t]his option is built on top of the Global Privacy Control (GPC). GPC is respected by increasing numbers of sites and enforced with legislation in some regions.

Increasing numbers? But then that means that "'Many' websites ignore it", right?

This reeks of early movements towards monetization of their shrinking userbase. It's genuinely disappointing. I used to like Firefox, and continue to use Thunderbird today. Good luck to the stragglers who decide to stick it out.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#24

Post by jeroenhd »

elashri wrote: post #16

I understand that many people here have a bad taste of Mozilla's recent actions in many aspects. But the reality here is that this is at worst removing something that almost nobody respected. It was based on honor system and even in Switzerland they do have random inspections for honor system. Browsers never had any enforcement of this feature. And ironically it was used as additional data point of tracking privacy a…

Medium supported it for ages. Tools like Matomo came with support for it by default.

Firefox has implemented the replacement, Global Privacy Control. It has the exact same problems and isn't respected either, except even fewer websites have implementations that respect GPC.

It's not a real solution to the normalised cyberstalking websites practice today, but it's also not entirely useless.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#26

Post by AlotOfReading »

oytis wrote: post #13
ezfe wrote: post #4

The feature was being used to track people because of how low usage was

An obvious solution would be to turn it on by default

That's what IE 10 did. It led all the major advertisers to make public statements that they were going to ignore the header as a form of protest.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#27

Post by wkat4242 »

oytis wrote: post #13
ezfe wrote: post #4

The feature was being used to track people because of how low usage was

An obvious solution would be to turn it on by default

This was used as an excuse by sites and advertisers to not support it actually. Because some browsers did that.

That wouldn't fly in the EU though because tracking is supposed to be opt in so enabling by default is fine.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#28

Post by karaterobot »

Browsers have such a low switching cost. I like Firefox because it has seemed aligned with me against web advertisements. Not even privacy, per se, but web advertisements specifically. If it stopped being that, I might as well go back to Chrome, which works a lot better on a lot of websites. Not saying Firefox is evil now, just saying there is nothing keeping me around if I get the sense that it's changing in ways I don't prefer.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#30

Post by kjrfghslkdjfl »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #26
oytis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious solution would be to turn it on by default

That's what IE 10 did. It led all the major advertisers to make public statements that they were going to ignore the header as a form of protest.

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