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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

#91

Post by coldpie »

gkoberger wrote: post #67

I was at Mozilla when this was implemented. It was completely optional for websites to support this. A few did at first. A lot of people internally wanted it to be on-by-default, but the argument was that if it was, nobody would respect it – after all, what tracking platform would willingly only track the 0.1% of people who went into the settings to enable it? (Internet Explorer did eventually enable it by default, w…

> I would love if the cookie modals on each site became browser-level

They are, in a roundabout way. Hop into your uBlock Origin settings and enable the Cookie Banners and Annoyances filters. The modal gets silently nuked in the background and you can carry on with your browsing. Since you never consented, this ought to be functionally the same as Declining the banner.

The Kill Sticky bookmark works similarly, for crappy browsers that don't support uBlock Origin (eg iOS, Chrome for Android): https://www.smokingonabike.com/2024/01/20/take-back-your-web...

(Remember when web browsers used to treat their users first and implemented things like Popup Blocking, enabled by default? I miss those days.)

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#92

Post by gkoberger »

rkharsan64 wrote: post #84
dudus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree and have said it for years. Microsoft is the main culprit of DNT failures.

Advertisers are the cause of DNT's failure, not Microsoft.

I mean I agree, I'm against advertisers.

But advertisers exist and will continue to exist, and have no incentive to follow this. I don't think either are at fault necessarily; I think it was a weak attempt all around.

The only thing that will get companies to comply are a/ laws (and so far all laws have done is annoy end users) b/ browsers doing more to block tracking (which is almost impossible; this will forever be a game of cat-and-mouse).

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#93

Post by mrmetanoia »

rkharsan64 wrote: post #84
dudus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree and have said it for years. Microsoft is the main culprit of DNT failures.

Advertisers are the cause of DNT's failure, not Microsoft.

It's always both, the people willing to pay someone to make things worse, and the people willing to take the money to do it.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#94

Post by 3form »

n144q wrote: post #22

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 o…

There are two orthogonal issues. You're mainly talking about the need of making the tracking (for people who don't want to be tracked) impractical; what also needs to be done is to make it illegal.

I feel like DNT was a "rushed" (i.e. with no legal backing) attempt to achieve the latter.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#95

Post by drannex »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #70
Sephr wrote: post #61

Removing this feature harms user agency. This will result in Firefox users having to deal with more annoying consent prompts. Transcend Consent Management's default configuration opts users out of every unessential tracking purpose (and suppresses automatic consent prompts) whenever DNT is enabled, but only opts users out of "Sale/sharing of info" when only GPC is enabled. Removing this centralized privacy signal mea…

> Removing this feature harms user agency It doesn't, because nobody respects it. It is actually harmful to have a feature that misrepresents its efficiency to users, especially when it comes to privacy and security. Nobody should ever feel that they will not be tracked because they enabled do-not-track, because it's wrong. Removing it is the right thing to do because of this.

Counter: It does, because some organizations and webmasters did respect it.

The other option, Mozilla should have done, is shame companies that did not respect it. A continually updated list, a notification when browsing a site that did not, etc, but the problem comes from this being a vendor issue and that it would not be 100% accurate.

Shaming is the only way this would have worked out, but they didn't, but for the ones who did this out of being a decent organization, they now no longer have a standard to base it on.

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#96

Post by bluGill »

registeredcorn wrote: post #56
JohnFen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It irks me, however, that they no longer even have the option. I think the major point is that they don't have the option right now . The percentage of websites that honor DNT is a rounding error, so the existence of it -- at best -- gives the illusion of privacy protection. In my opinion, the illusion of security is worse than not having security but knowing it.

>The percentage of websites that honor DNT is a rounding error Referring to my previous comment: "This is spurious reasoning. 'Many' is neither a percentage, or a basis for justification. Many people ignore speed limits - so what?" Privacy configurations are not a popularity vote. Instead, they are an implementation of software design. E.g. "No one" bothers with PGP, therefore it should be supported. A more charitabl…

Unless you have a plan to make it useful it needs to go. Right now it is false advertising. If you can find someone and successfuly sue them for not honoring it great - but you still need to do a lot more (sue many others in many countries).

Re: Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

#97

Post by karaterobot »

gkoberger wrote: post #76
karaterobot wrote: post #28

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…

Sunsetting this feature doesn't indicate Firefox has changed their opinions. DNT was never effective, and provided a false sense of security. No tracking company respected it, so it just became a meaningless setting.

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

#100

Post by wlesieutre »

gkoberger wrote: post #67

I was at Mozilla when this was implemented. It was completely optional for websites to support this. A few did at first. A lot of people internally wanted it to be on-by-default, but the argument was that if it was, nobody would respect it – after all, what tracking platform would willingly only track the 0.1% of people who went into the settings to enable it? (Internet Explorer did eventually enable it by default, w…

> IE did enable it by default, which got them good press but ultimately killed the feature since everyone stopped respecting it.

That's why RFC 35140 "Do-Not-Stab" specifies that the user agent MUST NOT enable it by default.

https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/

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