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Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

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Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#11

Post by theevocater »

I know people celebrated Microsoft's decision to do this in IE10, but this is what many of us were saying would happen. The relationship with the Do Not Track flag was always tenuous so flagrantly ignoring the spec (which indicates that default on is wrong) was simply going to cause companies to ignore the flag completely.

Regardless, this whole thing is silliness in the extreme. I wonder if this means yahoo is going to start allowing requests with the evil bit set as well :).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit)

EDIT: also, didn't IE revert this change?

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...

Well ... Sort of

> DNT fits naturally into this process. Customers will receive prominent notice that their selection of Express Settings turns DNT “on.” In addition, by using the Customize approach, users will be able to independently turn “on” and “off” a number of settings, including the setting for the DNT signal.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#12

Post by icebraining »

jtchang wrote: post #7

Took me a second to figure out this whole DNT business. So basically it is just an HTTP header your browser sends to the server that tells it not to track. Seems kind of like the wrong way to do it. If I was some nefarious website wouldn't I have straight up ignore it? There isn't any incentive for me to not track a user. In fact aren't a lot of companies around advertising based on the fact that you CAN track users?…

Websites don't track people, pervasive analytics, ad and social networks do. Since they have to be included by the website owners, they're usually not "scammers-r-us" but legal companies like Google, Facebook, KISSmetrics, etc.

Supposedly, the incentive for them not to track users who have DNT enabled is the PR hit.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#13

Post by smilliken »

tvladeck wrote: post #2

They key thing to understand is that if IE10 did not have DNT enabled, that the default setting would be _just as arbitrary_ and would still therefore not "map to user intent" in their words. There has to be a default in one direction or the other. That, and many users will use IE10 knowing that it ships with DNT pre-enabled. To ignore this is totally immoral and unethical. This is totally shameful.

Another way to look at it: this is the current status quo, and Yahoo is not going to make a radical change to its business because Microsoft changed a default setting in its web browser.

I had no reasonable expectation that Yahoo would handle this differently.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#14

Post by Dylan16807 »

theevocater wrote: post #11

I know people celebrated Microsoft's decision to do this in IE10, but this is what many of us were saying would happen. The relationship with the Do Not Track flag was always tenuous so flagrantly ignoring the spec (which indicates that default on is wrong) was simply going to cause companies to ignore the flag completely. Regardless, this whole thing is silliness in the extreme. I wonder if this means yahoo is going…

>people celebrated Microsoft's decision

They did? I didn't see any do that.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#15

Post by jlarocco »

ktsmith wrote: post #9
jtchang wrote: post #7

Took me a second to figure out this whole DNT business. So basically it is just an HTTP header your browser sends to the server that tells it not to track. Seems kind of like the wrong way to do it. If I was some nefarious website wouldn't I have straight up ignore it? There isn't any incentive for me to not track a user. In fact aren't a lot of companies around advertising based on the fact that you CAN track users?…

The thing about DNT is that the advertising industry (not malicious/shady websites) are supportive of it as a voluntary standard that they will comply with it. All the major players are saying they won't play nicely with IE10 due to the default on flag instead of a default null (no intent expressed) flag.

In other words meaning they're not going to support it...

"We're only going to support it if it's not turned on by default" is not really supporting DNT. It really shows they're business model depends on people being computer illiterate. And now that DNT is on by default they're revolting because they know few people will ever go out of their way to opt-in and get tracked.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#16

Post by theevocater »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #14
theevocater wrote: post #11

I know people celebrated Microsoft's decision to do this in IE10, but this is what many of us were saying would happen. The relationship with the Do Not Track flag was always tenuous so flagrantly ignoring the spec (which indicates that default on is wrong) was simply going to cause companies to ignore the flag completely. Regardless, this whole thing is silliness in the extreme. I wonder if this means yahoo is going…

>people celebrated Microsoft's decision They did? I didn't see any do that.

strange. maybe i read too much reddit :(

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#17

Post by tvladeck »

ktsmith wrote: post #4
tvladeck wrote: post #2

They key thing to understand is that if IE10 did not have DNT enabled, that the default setting would be _just as arbitrary_ and would still therefore not "map to user intent" in their words. There has to be a default in one direction or the other. That, and many users will use IE10 knowing that it ships with DNT pre-enabled. To ignore this is totally immoral and unethical. This is totally shameful.

>They key thing to understand is that if IE10 did not have DNT enabled, that the default setting would be _just as arbitrary_ and would still therefore not "map to user intent" in their words. There has to be a default in one direction or the other. The default is to send a null value in the header meaning that no intent has been expressed, that's not arbitrary. > That, and many users will use IE10 knowing that it sh…

> The default is to send a null value in the header meaning that no intent has been expressed, that's not arbitrary.

My statement that there has to be a default in "one direction or the other" is clearly wrong, as you've indicated. I would still argue that a null value is arbitrary and does not map to the user's wishes. My opinion is that having it 'on' is no more or less arbitrary than having no wishes expressed.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#18

Post by taf2 »

leeoniya wrote: post #8

To be honest, i actually don't care if yahoo tracks me on yahoo properties - in fact, i expect them to. What i DO NOT want is for them to track me across the entire internet through injected javascript, iframes and dedicated tracking domains that serve same-origin analytic scripts from hundreds of sites - that is unethical. Currently using adblock plus, noscript and ghostery on my FF setup with specific additional co…

it's also a very useful feature of the internet, that browser's like safari 6 have broken. there are other uses to third party cookies besides tracking - a/b testing. many web properties are shared between multiple top level domains. ecommerce sites will do this for example to sell different product lines, but they might want to have similar user preferences shared between the top level domains... you can't do that if you kill third party cookies... or block the same features that we'd use in ad networks to track you... IE10 isn't so bad it's just saying don't do this... so - we'll happily ignore it. safari 6 is the real story that hasn't gotten enough attention in comparison... thankful it's not as widely used or is it... iphone,ipad...

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#19

Post by powertower »

> Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction.

> It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.

Blatantly false. Not only are you presented with the option to turn off DNT on first use (that takes up the entire screen), but I'd imagine users would choose to have advertisers track them about 1-10% of the time if made to choose. So a default On setting does represent the consumer to a degree that you can't ignore.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#20

Post by ktsmith »

jlarocco wrote: post #15
ktsmith wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about DNT is that the advertising industry (not malicious/shady websites) are supportive of it as a voluntary standard that they will comply with it. All the major players are saying they won't play nicely with IE10 due to the default on flag instead of a default null (no intent expressed) flag.

In other words meaning they're not going to support it... "We're only going to support it if it's not turned on by default" is not really supporting DNT. It really shows they're business model depends on people being computer illiterate. And now that DNT is on by default they're revolting because they know few people will ever go out of their way to opt-in and get tracked.

> "We're only going to support it if it's not turned on by default"

No, they are only going to support it if it is _actually_ the users intent, not a vendors intent. This is completely reasonable and the actions of MS are undermining the efforts to get this voluntary standard going. Keep in mind, DNT is completely voluntary.

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