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The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

nytimes.com

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Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#31

Post by eli »

stingraycharles wrote: post #21
rgro wrote: post #2

The worst part about the DNT header was the requirement for the tracking companies to regulate themselves. Initially, the header was opt-in, but with the introduction of IE10, Microsoft decided that the option was going to be opt-out. Once the the DNT header was gaining traction and a not-so-small percentage of people began sending the header, the companies had no reason to comply, and the initiative sorta fell out o…

> The worst part about the DNT header was the requirement for the tracking companies to regulate themselves. Initially, the header was opt-in, but with the introduction of IE10, Microsoft decided that the option was going to be opt-out. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but being a former CTO of an adserving company, I feel qualified to at least voice my opinion: this was a brilliant move by Microsoft. The DNT header as…

I think you give them too much credit. I think Microsoft, having little to lose in the way of targeted advertising, simply wanted more people to use DNT to hurt or even just embarrass its competitors. I don't think they intended to torpedo the whole spec on purpose. (And, indeed, I don't see any severe legislation on the horizon)

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#32

Post by eli »

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #6

DNT was essentially dead quite a while ago. If we are goign to get something like Do Not Track, then it should have been drafted out of the public eye, had a nice short period for public comment and then recieved some sort of backing in law. Speculative implementations didn't really help. I'm not too familiar with the laws surrounding things like 'do not call' lists and anti-spam measures, but some sort of system fro…

At the risk of stating the obvious, Do Not Call has not stopped phone scams and telemarketing and CAN-SPAM has not stopped actual spam. It's hard for me to get too excited about a Do Not Track solution that only really applies to the sort of companies that follow the rules in the first place.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#33

Post by username223 »

It never made sense in the first place. It was an opt-in, voluntary restriction that destroys all of advertisers' supposed value with no legal consequences if they ignore it.

The only real solution is client-side, and we have that technology now: hosts-blocking, Ghostery, AdBlock, etc. If enough people cared, it could be enabled by default on new browser installs.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#34

Post by eli »

It was a weak idea from the start. If you trust advertising companies to do what they say, then there's already an opt-out tracking system: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ The bad actors (particularly ones not based in the US) were going to ignore DNT anyway.

Now, granted, it's technically far inferior to a DNT header (it sets a cookie on each ad network domain) but as far as I can tell it works and has worked for years.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#35

Post by JoeAltmaier »

eli wrote: post #31
stingraycharles wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part about the DNT header was the requirement for the tracking companies to regulate themselves. Initially, the header was opt-in, but with the introduction of IE10, Microsoft decided that the option was going to be opt-out. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but being a former CTO of an adserving company, I feel qualified to at least voice my opinion: this was a brilliant move by Microsoft. The DNT header as…

I think you give them too much credit. I think Microsoft, having little to lose in the way of targeted advertising, simply wanted more people to use DNT to hurt or even just embarrass its competitors. I don't think they intended to torpedo the whole spec on purpose. (And, indeed, I don't see any severe legislation on the horizon)

Microsoft has torpedoes many specs in the past, intentionally. They are certainly in that business. There is no reason to doubt that an appearance of torpedoing a spec wasn't exactly that - its the simplest explanation.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#36

Post by bad_user »

einrealist wrote: post #5
rgro wrote: post #2

The worst part about the DNT header was the requirement for the tracking companies to regulate themselves. Initially, the header was opt-in, but with the introduction of IE10, Microsoft decided that the option was going to be opt-out. Once the the DNT header was gaining traction and a not-so-small percentage of people began sending the header, the companies had no reason to comply, and the initiative sorta fell out o…

Unfortunately, most mobile device browsers do not support plugins. (That is why I started to write a proxy server for myself two weeks ago.)

Firefox for Android does. Have been using it and is pretty good.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#37

Post by grimman »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35
eli wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you give them too much credit. I think Microsoft, having little to lose in the way of targeted advertising, simply wanted more people to use DNT to hurt or even just embarrass its competitors. I don't think they intended to torpedo the whole spec on purpose. (And, indeed, I don't see any severe legislation on the horizon)

Microsoft has torpedoes many specs in the past, intentionally. They are certainly in that business. There is no reason to doubt that an appearance of torpedoing a spec wasn't exactly that - its the simplest explanation.

There's definitely precedent for that behavior from Microsoft's side, obvious or not (a certain anti-trust case springs to mind). They have nothing to gain by being obvious about it, and everything to gain by being a whole lot more sneaky about it.

I'm not saying it's necessarily what happened with the DNT header, but they'd do well to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves in certain cases.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#39

Post by amelius »

IdeaSunday wrote: post #3
rgro wrote: post #2

The worst part about the DNT header was the requirement for the tracking companies to regulate themselves. Initially, the header was opt-in, but with the introduction of IE10, Microsoft decided that the option was going to be opt-out. Once the the DNT header was gaining traction and a not-so-small percentage of people began sending the header, the companies had no reason to comply, and the initiative sorta fell out o…

Wont you always be trackable by an heuristic approach? I would expect that a fuzzy hash of your ip,location,language settings,resolution, browsertype, average mousespeed, your computers speed to draw a circle, calc a prime etc etc etc will always identify you.

It's the same as in the real world.

E.g., even if you wear a burqa, you can still be tracked by the color of your sandals, the speed by which you move, the perfume that you use, etc.

Hence, the problem is probably best attacked by making appropriate laws that prohibit use of tracking information.

Re: The Slow Death of ‘Do Not Track’

#40

Post by eli »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35
eli wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you give them too much credit. I think Microsoft, having little to lose in the way of targeted advertising, simply wanted more people to use DNT to hurt or even just embarrass its competitors. I don't think they intended to torpedo the whole spec on purpose. (And, indeed, I don't see any severe legislation on the horizon)

Microsoft has torpedoes many specs in the past, intentionally. They are certainly in that business. There is no reason to doubt that an appearance of torpedoing a spec wasn't exactly that - its the simplest explanation.

Well, no, because they actually want something like Do Not Track to succeed. The theory that they made it fail on purpose so that an even stronger version of the same idea will come about is definitely not the simplest explanation.
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