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Microsoft Adds 'Do Not Track' Option For IE9
devbox writes "Microsoft says it will offer a privacy setting in the next version of Internet Explorer that will make it easy for users to keep their browsing habits from being tracked by advertising networks and other third-party websites. 'By designing these sorts of enhancements with privacy in mind at the design phase, we're able to deliver a functionality that provides consumers additional levels of control over what they want to engage in and how they choose to do so,' Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen blogged. Previously, Mozilla stopped working on a similar feature for Firefox after pressure from advertisers and other OSS projects as it would hurt their revenue sources from advertisers."
(except for us)
If the tracking is all done on the server side, who's to know if it's a meaningful feature or not?
Haha...how is this going to help when most of IE people are still using IE6?
It looks like it only addresses tracking by HTTP cookies? It would be pretty easy for advertisers to just do the tracking via LSO, fingerprinting, HTML5, etc instead.
I'm a more than a little impressed that MS is going ahead with this. Hopefully this is all the excuse they need over at Mozilla to reconsider their decision.
Sure, they would love to make big dollars on ads (Bing), but IE9 as part of their renewed effort in the browser wars, is already paid for thanks to Windows. Microsoft's privacy policies are superior to most of their competitors. I know it's cool to hate on Microsoft, and it's often deserved, but in the realm of personal privacy a trust them a bit more than I would groups like google or mozilla firefox(funded by google), who's business revolves around collecting your information.
How many companies even HAVE a Chief Privacy Strategist? Where do you go to school for that? I can only imagine a Computer Science Degree with a high focus on networking and security - but even those don't always focus on the issues of PRIVACY on the internet.
Can I get a job at Apple as their Chief Privacy Strategist? I know I could totally just point the Safari team at HTTPS Everywhere, tell them to get crackin', get a better "Secure viewing" mode in that browser. Then walk away with my 6 figure paycheck and get a mention on Slashdot!
AE certaeinly hoepe thaet noeoene haed troeuble reaeding the summaery.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Also, this just in, there are predictions for snowfall in Hell, this evening...
In all seriousness, IT'S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME. Someone needs to stand up to the constant intrusion into our personal habits, and if Microsoft is going to be the first to do so, more power to them. If they do as good of a job on IE9 as they have on Windows 7, it will end up being an awesome browser, anyway.
5 years ago, I would have never believed that those words would have come out of my mouth. Of course, back then, WinXP was their offering, and I was a student intern writing Linux kernel code for credit. Everything changes...
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
Uhh... I think you're still going to be tracked.
The only way to avoid being tracked is to take control of your own machine. Do not run tracking scripts, do not download web bugs, surf through an anonymous proxy to hide your IP, and so forth.
Anything else and you're just up to the good graces of the tracking party. And look how well that's worked out for email spam.
This is pointless for systems designed to collect fingerprints of your systems in ways that "iesnare" does. Each time you visit a site your computer gets "processed" and that information is stored on a remote server and shared to all in network servers. There is zero need to store it on your computer because your computers fingerprint will remain static enough to track you anyways. There are so many ways to track and catalog machines its not even funny. This is PURE THEATER designed to do nothing more than make people feel better without actually doing anything to secure their identities or habits!
This proposal seems to be all about cookies. This doesn't address the real problems of computer fingerprinting and flash objects.
Ideally, it would be impossible for a web server to leave any persistent data on your machine, and impossible to determine anything about your machine other than your IP address and possibly your browser version.
I use Ghostery and Adblock Plus to stop all my tracking and doesnt slow me down one bit, in fact not having to load all those ads speeds up your browsing.
If websites wanted to make money from advertising DO IT FROM YOUR OWN SITE and dont take the cheap way out, and people relying on generic advertising for an income better get some business sense and stop complaining your not making any money.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
But every little bit helps. Users could user a swing in their favor after years of advertising networks chipping away at our privacy.
This is just absurd. Who cares about privacy and also trusts Microsoft and uses IE? IE is blocked in all of my firewalls from ever accessing the Internet (and every once in a while that does catch and prevent something that is trying to "phone home"). Thanks for being so concerned about my security Microsoft, but I will just keep and block the current version that you forced into my operating system, for security I'll use other browsers. When someone insists on IE , I "just say no". My bank insisted that I use IE for on-line banking. My new bank didn't.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So how is this any different from Forcing InPrivate Filtering on and adding a filter list to it like you can with IE8?
Is it going to have a constantly updated list like AdBlockPlus?
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I feel that this is going to be frowned upon severely if they disable the ability to track users. For example, you don't only use analytics to learn more about how your users interact with your site, or who actually goes there for advertisement slots, but you use this data to better improve your site and to learn how you can improve with your own advertising techniques elsewhere. I strongly advise people to stop using ABP or similar ad-blocking service to sites that they enjoy and don't contain obstrusive ads (ie: popups, pop-under, ads that interrupt what you're doing, and even make loud annoying sounds) because when you block ads, you're basically taking and not giving back to the free service you are using. Servers cost an arm and a leg and especially if you have a big audience. Did you know that slashdot has ads on the site? One of them is about WoW and the other one is a IBM ad. Then on the right side there's a Marketplace and google ad spot.
/. block ads, that means that only 40% of its users see ads while 60% of them mooch off the content. Realistically, you can get rid of a few advertisement slots if everyone saw ads and come out even. So in reality, you may think that you're doing nothing wrong but you're forcing websites to put even more ads up because they need to compensate for the amount of people who can't see them. However there are some websites that cannot create new ad positions due to their layout so that can affect the quality, quantity and even reliability of the site/service. So kids, be cool and disable ABP on sites you want to support such as Slashdot :)
Let's assume that 60% of the users on
Previously Mozilla stopped working on a similar feature for Firefox after pressure from advertisers and other OSS projects as it would hurt their revenue sources from advertisers.
Isn't it possible to fork Firefox and implement the track-block feature independently? It should be part of the web browser (not just a plugin, that might or might not work in the future) and it would set it apart from the other browsers by it's page rendering speed due to bypassing all the "doubleclick", "analytics" and other cruft.
Or fork webkit,that would be a killer combination.. :)
It will have one or more of the following issues:
* It will be defective by design from day one.
* It will be easily disabled remotely.
* MS will share some way to detect it with advertisers, who will then add functionality which refuses to display a page until you disable it.
* It will have one or more security holes, allowing compromise of PII.
* It will be dropped, at the last minute, from the release.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Who makes money from tracking users? Google. Microsoft is in effect attacking Google's revenue source.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/12/07/ie9-and-privacy-introducing-tracking-protection-v8.aspx
Some details about the guy in his hiring announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/jun03/06-23cullenpr.mspx
His background is in the Canadian banking industry...
"Cullen holds an MBA from Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He is a founding member of two networks of chief privacy officers and is an active public speaker. "
I would love to think that MS is doing this in the interests of the users, but can't help thinking of who this would hurt the most in terms of revenue.
A Do-Not-Track Law is still very necessary to spell out what rights users have (over their own frickin' data) and to create a bright line that companies can be clear about staying behind or getting sued.
Of course, I trust Congress to create such a law balanced in the interests of individual citizens about as much as I trust Microsoft to implement this feature with benign intent.
If anything, there should be a "DO track" button and browsers should be private by default.
How about we just have an HTTP header that, if present in the request, states exactly which tracking the user consents to? No ambiguity, easy to implement on both the browser and the server side. End of problem. At least for users, and since it's our data I don't see where any other party should be getting a say in how it's used.
Careful what you wish for... Remember what happened when we finally got a so-called "anti-spam" law...
Actually, it's in Microsoft's interest for something like this to work, and work well.
I've mentioned before that I believe this is the best way for MS to fight Google. (Since MS is a software company, Google is an ad company. Why try to fight them with a search engine, it misses the point.)
Add an ad-blocker to IE, built in, on by default (in addition to this bug-blocker.) Single button on the toolbar to turn ads back on, with options for finer-grained settings.
Microsoft can then go further. Allow an opt-in user-requested ad feature, where the ads are served by the browser for participating websites. Users can set what type of ads they want (no anim, no sound, for example), white- or black-list products or companies, and list areas of interest. Advertisers will hate the user control, but because people have asked for the ads, and are thus more likely to trust the network, that increases both click-through and sales, so advertisers would generally pay more. That also means more money per-ad for websites, increasing their participation. etc etc. Users win, websites win, advertisers win.
Meanwhile, if most Firefox users use ABP, and all IE-default-setting users have ads blocked, that leaves only Chrome users to give Google their ad-revenue. Less money means less research, less innovation, more rivals, fragmented market. Microsoft wins.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I do not understand why there is a Slashdot article for every IE9 feature.
Microsoft is very well known for announcing products that were released very late or even never in some cases.
Why do we have to comment on a such a feature, obviously designed to piss off Google ?
And who cares about IE9, when the other browsers are better in every way ?
Instead of announcing every future functionality, to let us believe that they work on their browser and care about us, why not simply release an upgraded browser every few months ?
Meanwhile, Google and Apple release products without announcing them 6 months before, and push their updates regularly.
Does this show once again that Microsoft is unable to push updates to the user ?
Oh, and I'm pretty sure that IE9 will include IE5/IE6/IE7/IE8 rendering engines à la DirectX, for old sites' compatibility.
Hey, Microsoft, we are in 2010 !
Designing in the design phase. How novel.
I'm glad that anti-spam law stopped spam from coming into my inbox... oh wait.
Just because the US passes some law, it won't prevent tracking from happening. This is ironically both a negative and positive attribute. It's a global network, it can't truly be "policed".
Why should Congress pass a law balanced in the interests of individual citizens? How does this help big corporations? Why should they care about individuals at all? Are individuals going to give them generous campaign contributions like big corporations do?
The problem is that we have the idea that everything on the web should be free. So the idea of "ad supported" has come about. Well, advertising brings along a host of evils because it has to be pervasive and intrusive in order to work to the best benefit for the advertiser.
Also, while you might think it is handy to not have to pay for anything, the web sites that are trying to be ad supported are finding the money a bit thin. Advertising rates are down and ad blocking is up. End result is the web sites are willing to do anything, anything at all to get more money. Whatever the advertiser wants to make their message more sticky and increase the ad rates.
I think advertising on the web is doomed in the end. Unfortunately we are going to see more and more pervasive, penetrating and invasive advertising strategies towards the end of this. The last thing we want is to have to solve ad puzzles to get to free content, but that is exactly where things are going.
Microsoft isn't going to be able to buck this very well. Sure, you can block tracking until it gets to the point where you have to sign in with a confirmed identity to access content, get search results and receive advertising.
Microsoft sells an ad server called 'Atlas' and a company that I once worked for that depends heavily on online advertising paired that server with a behavioral targetting (Read: tracking) system in order to "better" target advertisements to our users. Now there is no direct connection between Atlas and tracking usage/behavior but I know for a fact that online ads, and thus an ad server, become MUCH less useful if there is no usage/behavioral data on the users... so I am not entirely buying a full blown usage blocker. Although I suppose that the hit that a competitor such as Google would take from that kind of feature would exponentially outweigh the impact against Microsoft
While a "Do not track" option is nice, many of us are still waiting for a "Do not overflow buffers and ignore the defect for years" option.
- T
How about we don't ?
If you do that you would be simply be advertising to every site what your (dis)likes are, which definitily will be used to select/target you with (just as the "do no call" register is used as a list to whom to snail-mail their spam to).
All those "solutions" are alike the idea that if you ask a mugger not to mug you he will turn around and walk away. If you think that is the stupetest thing you have ever heard (reality proves otherwise) than how come you think that a "please do not do [some list] to me" to a spammer will ?
Close your windows and lock your doors. Simply reject people rattling your gate entry. Do not rely on others to keep your property safe.
Then just move servers outside the united states where the law doesn't exist.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"He is a founding member of two networks of chief privacy officers"
After all, he protects the Allspark right?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Transformers_(film)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Peter_Cullen
Bonus - they're both Canadian.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is the first I am hearing about this. Such behavior from Mozilla is a serious problem. I thought FireFox was supposed to be the new and better way to do web browsing, and now I find out that this project is just as beholden to moneyed interests as other browsers. Not cool, Mozilla. Not cool.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Cookies - if a user has them disabled they can't login to quite a few sites until they turn them back on. (Sure session id's can be attached to headers, but that has other security issues) IE 6 & 7- check. Privacy settings, if locked down as secure as one can make it, this will filter or block 90% (source: thin air) of the web. IE7 & 8 - check. Get the idea, irrelevant stat notwithstanding? This new "Untrackable" option, if turned on, will prevent you from viewing 90% of the web - eventually. How long will it take developers to add in the same functionality, hacks and patches that make Privacy Settings and disabling Cookies useless?
If IE does it and Mozilla doesn't I'll stop using Firefox.
Ubuntu already has bleachbit, Safari and Firefox have private browsing, Noscript exists... how is MS the first?
This is coming very shortly after the congressional hearing where Eben Moglen gave testimony among others (see C-SPAN at 1:37:52). He actually explained AdblockPlus to counter the argument that the advertisment industry would collapse if privacy in the Internet would be restored.
From Jesse Ruderman: