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Microsoft Adds 'Do Not Track' Option For IE9

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the and-who-will-listen dept.

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."

122 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. You forgot the parenthetic on that... by retech · · Score: 4, Funny

    (except for us)

    1. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There should be a mod category for posts that play on popular opinion while distorting facts.
      It may not have been distortion, but if so please provide source.

    2. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by davester666 · · Score: 2

      First thing blocked: google analytics

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    3. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by windcask · · Score: 1

      Kind of like how you can't use a whitelist with Gmail.

    4. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by RobertM1968 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Odd, when every malformed URL has went to MS since time immemorial. And odd, that if you read their privacy statement, TOS, and EULA, you will find they claim to have the right to do exactly these things.

      Do you suspect they actually dont do those things, but just like mentioning (errr... burying) them in their various docs about their products and services?

      --
      StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
    5. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by h4rm0ny · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'll use the browser if it does that. Microsoft make their main money from selling software. Firefox and Chrome make their money from Google which makes its money from tracking what you do and selling the information. We're more likely to see a privacy-respecting browser from MS than from Google, as unlike with Google, it doesn't contradict their core business model.

      --

      Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
    6. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      No, no, you just said that Google were less ethical than Microsoft. That is a logical impossibility on slashdot.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    7. Re:You forgot the parenthetic on that... by RobertM1968 · · Score: 1

      Oh, Mr. Ballmer, give it a rest. Microsoft took a lot of flack over their privacy policies just recently. And it's been all over slashdot, so those who visit here know this to be true as well. The answer was their "new, simplified, we really care about such things" privacy policies, which made even "better" use of the term "Business Partner" (err, anyone who pays money to become such a designate). If you search Google, you'll find they have been taking criticism over their (lack of true) privacy policies for about ten years... and simply keep revising them to say the same thing in different words. Much like their new policy on releasing threat (malware) information (where they changed some terms to obsfucate the meaning... but pretty much left the meanings all the same as before).

      Ballmer, you aren't fooling anyone with the rewording in the privacy policies... go back to throwing chairs and stop trolling here.

      --
      StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
  2. server-side tracking by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 1

    If the tracking is all done on the server side, who's to know if it's a meaningful feature or not?

    1. Re:server-side tracking by Bucky24 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Tracking done on the server side relies on environment variables that the server gets by querying the browser. If the browser refuses to give those variables, tracking can't be done.

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
    2. Re:server-side tracking by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      It can be done, by IP address, but it's trickier. People change IPs sometimes, and multible users may share an IP.

    3. Re:server-side tracking by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't think you quite understand how it works - the idea is not only to keep them from reading stuff off your machine but also some level of anonymization on the net.

      Right now the big practice is to put tracking cookies on your computer. Seriously, let your parents browse the web unfiltered and unrestricted for about a month, then do a good Antivirus scan and if you come back with any less than 100 tracking cookies I'll be surprised.

      So thats one issue they are trying to tackle. The other one is as you said, what happens when my information is being tracked on the server? That's where anonymizing protocols come in handy. You are never the same person twice when visiting the web site, you always appear to be a new client. As such, they'll never have previous records on your computer.

      Couple that with an increase usage of HTTPS possibly built into the browser, and no third party adserver can "snoop" what goes on between you and the server. Brilliant.

    4. Re:server-side tracking by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 1

      The server doesn't need to query anything. Enough info comes in by default to at very least track a household's web browsing in almost real time. Look into it in more detail.

    5. Re:server-side tracking by devbox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure, but that's far fetched from the ability that cookies and the likes of Google Analytics offer for marketers. It's stupid to say "this won't end it all" and think it's better to do nothing. Every bit helps, and this is huge step forward. Especially for normal and clueless users.

      Beside, while maybe not relevant for the whole world, I'm currently living in Asia and every country I've been has heavy proxies for surfing. Squid everywhere, you basically cannot get your own ip. And because Asia as a region has billions of users and so few ip's, tracking by ip just doesn't work on individual basis.

    6. Re:server-side tracking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Antivirus scanners look at browser cookies? No wonder nobody uses that stuff anymore.

    7. Re:server-side tracking by micheas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The question is do people really want the lack of personalization that anonymity implies.

      Turn on anonymity and get google in a random language, based on the country of the proxy server you are connecting to google from, or get search results that are skewed based on what you have searched for and to a lesser extent, what has been searched for from your ipaddress. If a slashdot searches on google for boa, one of the top results is an IDE for python. I suspect that for a user that spends most of their time searching for the interests of seven year olds they could get a harry potter link in the top ten.

      For a website that makes no personalization, and is just looking to scrape data to sell to advertisers, sure, there is basically no reason not to use anonymization software.

      The reason that google gets so much information is that their services work better if you give them a fair amount of information, The fact that they do this quietly without you having to click a million checkboxes is viewed as a good thing by people that are stressed for time.

      The viability of anonymization is very dependent on what the user is doing, and which sites they are using. The problems for people promoting anonymity also include: anonymizing tends to be slower than regular browsing (tor, for example); Anonymization tends to be work; Most people, most of the time, don't care about their surfing habits.

      Another problem is the lack of awareness that the net is not all love and happiness. For example, most reporters, including several linux focused reporters, first reported that the solution to firesheep was to use WEP, without understanding that as soon as the packet goes out on the net it is at least as vulnerable as an unprotected wireless lan, and possibly more so, as wireless networks are somewhat more unstable due to electrical interference an dpor signal quality on a lot of wireless networks.

      I just don't see how anonymous browsing gets traction, unless there is civil unrest NATO countries, or some other compelling external event to make people care about their privacy.

      I don't mean to be a downer, but I have watched a lot of not too difficult things never catch on. (https on all authenticated connections, pgp, tor, personalized certificates, and more)

      --
      Work bio at MMWD
    8. Re:server-side tracking by c0lo · · Score: 1

      The server doesn't need to query anything. Enough info comes in by default to at very least track a household's web browsing in almost real time. Look into it in more detail.

      What the hell are you talking about? Care to name some specifics, outside a possible temporary IP address that might mean something, that server side is able to track if client is blocking all client related info?

      Yeap, I can imagine a number of things in here. E.g. sessionID, which can be passed as an HTTP POST/GET argument, or in the body of XML Ajax requests (as xml content). Granted, this info doesn't usualy survive between two different session, but it is not necessary to be so.

      But let me ask you: with the cloud, who needs cookies anymore? Just login into your WindowsLive account and they don't need cookies to track you: what an incentive (by deception) for you - the consumer - to go for IE9. More than that: what an argument for Microsoft to pressure the advertisers to "join the MS cloud and have plenty of user habit statistics"!!!

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    9. Re:server-side tracking by c0lo · · Score: 1

      and no third party adserver can "snoop" what goes on between you and the server. Brilliant.

      Except if you are tricked to loging on your WindowsLive account. Or Facebook. Or whatever "cloud".
      While "inside the cloud", you won't see the trackers - but not because they don't exists.

      Wanna bet that MS will offer you the option of "login in the cloud when computer starts"? (if they are not doing it already by default, with a very hard to find way to opt-out).

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    10. Re:server-side tracking by devbox · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You quoted what I said but you clearly did not understand it. I know about Flash cookies, user agent fingerprinting and all of those. The point is, it's a major victory for privacy if the most used browser on the planet will enable this. Yes, you can still use all kinds of trickery, but that's not the point.

      You can go on and on about it, but what you're saying is like fire department is completely useless because they can only stop 99% of fires.

    11. Re:server-side tracking by Eskarel · · Score: 1

      All you can do with that is track who(for a given value of who) came to your site and when. I don't really have a problem with people hosting a website knowing that I visited it. It's all this cross tracking garbage where someone like Google knows every website I've visited that bothers me.

    12. Re:server-side tracking by c0lo · · Score: 1

      Yes, there are other ways. But I'm a little bit surprised you are actually blaming them to offer users extra privacy...

      Don't take me wrong. I'm far from blaming them for this, but I was taught/conditioned by MS to be excesively paranoid when it comes with their motives. (not hateful, just paranoid)

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    13. Re:server-side tracking by c0lo · · Score: 1

      As a user of some Windows Live services, I can tell you that it to irritation defaults out to asking you to log in again - in stark contrast to the autologin of Facebook, and stealth "login" of Google (eg. tracking).

      Good to hear it... Keep an eye on it, though, wouldn't hurt ;) "it doesn't matter if you are paranoid or not, they are after you anyway" ;).
      And, mods, +1 informative please. I admit myself as coward enough not to even try Windows Live.

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    14. Re:server-side tracking by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Those squid proxies include the originating IP in an HTTP header on outgoing connections. Do you think the ISP would take the legal risk of providing some type of real anonyminity for it's users, and be unable to respond to subpoenas (Or their Asian equvilents, I don't know anything of the legal system there)?

    15. Re:server-side tracking by Malc · · Score: 1

      Google already does that kind of thing. I was based in Shanghai for four weeks in the summer, and even though I'd explicitly go to google.co.uk, I'd get results from their .hk domain, or results in Chinese. I started having to go through a proxy I managed to set up on our network in California, which at least gave me something approximating English.

      Incidentally, Google's doing a lot of annoying things at the moment... like disabling 100 results per search by default.

    16. Re:server-side tracking by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      If it's good enough for the RIAA/MPAA to sue people and get away with it, it's surely good enough for ad tracking.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    17. Re:server-side tracking by thisisntme · · Score: 1

      The question is do people really want the lack of personalization that anonymity implies.

      Turn on anonymity and get google in a random language, based on the country of the proxy server you are connecting to google from

      This really annoys me. I work in Swtzerland, so websites often send me to a German language (which I don't speak) version. Usually (but not always) there is a link somewhere to a French and/or English version, but often I have to jump through hoops to get a version I can read, even though my browser specifically asked for the English one.

    18. Re:server-side tracking by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      The problem is that this solution is stupid. A "do not track" flag for browsers makes exactly as much sense as a "do not hack" flag for computers:

      http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1898834&cid=34472828

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    19. Re:server-side tracking by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      My IP is transient, so I turn off my modem when I'm not using it.

      Sorry, what's a modem?

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    20. Re:server-side tracking by musicalmicah · · Score: 1

      I highly doubt that this "do not track" option prevents all environment variables from being sent. Browser data is quite often as unique as a thumbprint, even data that has nothing to do with cookies or privacy. Preventing the transmission of this data would break a lot of functionality designed for IE - think of all those messages on "enterprise websites" that say "Your browser does not have [control]. Please go here to download." That data in itself can make you trackable.

    21. Re:server-side tracking by Taxman415a · · Score: 1
      That's all well and good if you like the personalization and don't mind the tracking. Then have at it. The thing is, it should be a choice.

      The reason that google gets so much information is that their services work better if you give them a fair amount of information

      No the reason they get so much information is that they have gone out of their way to figure out a huge number of different ways to get as much of that information as possible. As an incentive, they also make some of their services work better with it.

      I just don't see how anonymous browsing gets traction, unless there is civil unrest NATO countries, or some other compelling external event to make people care about their privacy.

      This is your better point. It's not that most people like the personalization that much, it's just that they can't be arsed to care enough to figure out what is being tracked and stored about them and how to stop it.

      What I do like about this move from MS is that it is more evidence that they are having to compete on features and quality and no longer have the power to distort markets. They are getting desperate to stop the market share decline of IE so they are even willing to remove the tracking. Of course, they'll still probably track what you do themselves, they'll just help you stop other more successful online marketers like Google.

    22. Re:server-side tracking by micheas · · Score: 1

      Turn on anonymity and get google in a random language, based on the country of the proxy server you are connecting to google from

      Hello,

      I just wanted to reply to this tiny bit of your post - Google honor your browser settings. If you get a random language when using google you have not configured your browser correctly.

      IE: Tools > Internet Options > General > Languages > Add.. (put in your prefferred language here). Select your language (e.g. English) and move it to the top of your list.

      Firefox: Tools > Options > Content > (Languages) Choose. Add your language and move it to the top of the list.

      Now, no matter if you go to google.co.uk, google.fr, google.com, google.it it will be in the language you have set up in your browser.

      A note, (assuming you want English as your language, and are an American) You need to have en-US, en-UK, en, and possibly a couple other English versions to make sure the setting takes, as the standard (last time I checked) tells the webservers to only act on exact matches, not fuzzy matches, apache still only does exact matches AFAIK.

      This an even bigger issue if you have a second language that you read, but would rather get pages in your primary language.

      --
      Work bio at MMWD
  3. Wow, pretty impressed. by nametaken · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by nametaken · · Score: 1

      This article is clearly not about the techniques you're thinking of, which are relatively difficult, even less reliable, relatively uncommon, and mostly outside the purview of browser makers.

      So... deep breaths. Deep breaths.

    2. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps the other way around? Microsoft realised how dependant OSS projects are on advertising, and tried to find a good way to hurt them? Though rather pointless, as the people who visit sites like Slashdot arn't going to be running IE anyway.

    3. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      While I like this move, I don't think MS is being truly altruistic about this. They're looking at their bottom line. MS is not an advertiser, and they don't operate open source projects that are dependent on advertising. So, they have very little to lose by implementing this. On the other side, their rivals have a lot to lose. Look at their main rivals - open source in general (in the form of OpenOffice, Linux, Firefox, and MySQL to name a few), Google (an advertiser), and Apple. Allowing their browser to block advertising directly affects the viability of open source projects and affects the bottom line of Google. It doesn't hurt Apple, but they'll just need to find another way to stick it to Apple when they can.

      I just find it a little bit ironic that open source communities are advocating for advertising while mega-corp Microsoft is now in favor of allowing users to block it. It seems a little weird on the surface, but it makes financial sense. I doubt Mozilla will reconsider because they rely more on advertising revenue than Microsoft does. I could see Opera or Apple implementing this though, for the same reasons. I highly doubt Mozilla or Google would add this into their browsers, although the presence of AdBlock makes the point sort of moot for Mozilla. I would be pretty shocked if a version of Chrome showed up with this feature though.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    4. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      MS isn't being altruistic about this at all. It's a direct shot at Google, most specifically targeting how Google generates revenue. If they really wanted to turn the heat up, they could ship the browser with an ad blocker as well. Microsoft has finally realized that it's not going to unseat Google. If they can't have that money, why not deprive Google of it as well?

      If the strategy worked ideally, it would demolish Google's revenues because they're unable to collect information about users and their ads aren't being seen by as many eyeballs. That's Google's bread and butter business right there. The reason for the existence of both Android and Chrome OS is to prevent this kind of lockout from happening. Android isn't completely under Google's control so it is possible to lock them out (See the Android phone that uses Bing for search and stories about Verizon possibly considering replacing the Android Marketplace with their own store.) if various third parties wanted to, but Chrome OS seems to be under Google's control to a larger extent at this point.

      Google is smart and they realize that their position is open to attack, which is part of the reason they've been expanding into so many other areas and will continue to look for new ways to expose customers to their ads or gather information about users that can be used for targeted advertisements.

    5. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by FatMacDaddy · · Score: 1

      I'm happy to see this too and also hope that FF and others follow this cue. But I don't think it's for the reasons others are mentioning here. To me, this is a case of MS hoping to head off Government intervention in this area. Even the folks on Capitol Hill have come to realize that tracking in its current form is a problem. There was a bureaucrat the other day talking about needing to address the "Flash cookie problem" and saying they're working with Adobe on it. This is just like the major sport bike makers all suddenly agreeing that 180mph is fast enough for anyone - right about the time congress started making noise about limiting the top speed of bikes (after the Hayabusa approached 200mph).

      I'm glad for what they're doing, though I'm not ready to trust them to implement this honestly.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
    6. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by westlake · · Score: 1

      Microsoft realized how dependent OSS projects are on advertising, and tried to find a good way to hurt them? Though rather pointless, as the people who visit sites like Slashdot aren't going to be running IE anyway.

      But your employer may be more comfortable with a company that sells a product and not the user.*

      It's an attitude that can filter down to others.

      * - "With business users, IE6 share has dropped even more substantially as IE8 has the largest usage share of any browser in businesses with 34.1% usage share versus 10.3% for IE6 worldwide in November The Decline of Internet Explorer 6.0

    7. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      Being an old paranoid fart, I guess it means they have long stopped using that method to track people.

    8. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by cbhacking · · Score: 2

      Um... Microsoft is actually an advertiser (well, ad provider). They're much less famous for it than Google, but they nonetheless have search-related and context-related ads on web pages.

      There's a feature in IE8 (and IE9 beta) called "InPrivate Filtering" (It's under the "Safety" icon/menu). IPF causes the browser to block third-party content that shows up on more than a few websites - such as scripts that track you by cookies, or advertisers where the client pulls data from a third-party server. It's disabled by default and gimped in various ways, though, because (as I heard it; no citation at hand) the IE team was told that enabling this would make it too hard for their online services (seartch, etc.) division to make money.

      However, you can manually enable it and tweak it. I block everything from Google Analytics to Facebook. The neat thing about the latter is that Facebook.com still works, because there it's first-party. Sotes other than Facebook.com can't even tell that I'm signed in, though.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    9. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by guyfawkes-11-5 · · Score: 2

      I think they may have done this to knock Google down a peg, Google is much more dependent on advertising and analytics than Microsoft.

    10. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by Boogaroo · · Score: 2

      Not everyone is all or nothing about ads.
      I see a checkbox to disable ads on this site, but I don't click it.

      On common sites I visit that I feel are worth visiting, I don't block their ads either.

      All random sites, ads blocked unless I find them to be unobtrusive or worthy of my support.

      I'm OK with advertising. It has to overcome a few barriers but it's not something that is altogether horrible everywhere. What really matters is whether I am in control or not.

    11. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by h4rm0ny · · Score: 1

      as the people who visit sites like Slashdot arn't going to be running IE anyway.

      I'll admit that I'm using Konqueror at the moment, but when I happen to be booted up into Windows, I use IE8 for /.. It's pretty zippy and I became irritated with Firefox as it gets ever larger. I only use it for web-development now as the combo of Firebug and the Web Developer toolbar are unrivalled.

      --

      Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
    12. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by Voyager529 · · Score: 1

      That said, this might raise the cost of marketing so I'm all for it even thought it means siding with Microsoft.

      The problem with that line of logic is that marketing, like every other expense of a business, is baked into the product or service that we, the consumers, purchase. If marketing costs go up, depending on the company, it could either decrease the amount of advertising they do, or, more likely, increase the cost of the products we buy. I dunno about you, but I still buy stuff pretty frequently, and those products tend to advertise. Even if I buy a Pepsi on an impulse buy, or because I'm having a gathering, the cost of their Super Bowl commercials still factor in to the cost of the bottle. If advertising costs go up by 20%, you can bet that my Pepsi bottle will increase in cost by a similar amount.

      It's frightening how close to reality the world of WALL-E is becoming.

    13. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by amicusNYCL · · Score: 2

      Um... Microsoft is actually an advertiser (well, ad provider).

      I understand that, but it's not their bread and butter. This is the Microsoft breakdown for 2010, in revenue, in billions, by division. Advertising is included in online services:

      Windows/Windows Live - 18.4
      Server/Tools - 14.8
      Online Services - 2.1
      Business - 18.6
      Devices/Entertainment - 8.0

      Out of the 2.1 billion made from online services, 1.9 billion of that was from advertising. So, out of Microsoft's 2010 revenue of 62.4 billion, 1.9 billion, or 3%, came from advertising. Compare that with Google's income from advertising to see why I identified Google, and not Microsoft, as an advertiser. Microsoft sells software, and Google is an advertiser. It doesn't matter that Microsoft does a little advertising and Google sells a little software, I'm talking about core business.

      http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fr_dis.html

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    14. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by northstarlarry · · Score: 1

      They're doing it, and other tech companies are considering it, only so that the FCC and Congress won't force them to. I don't say that's good or bad, just that's the reason this is even on their to-do list.

    15. Re:Wow, pretty impressed. by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      Fair enough, but it does have potential to hurt Misrosoft's bottom line too (this being the reason IPF does silly things like turn itself off for every new browser session).

      That said, this feature sounds like what IPF should have been in the first place. I hope they integrate the automatic detection of third-party content used by multiple sites, but having the ability to subscribe to a block-list will help a lot.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  4. That's a position? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!

    1. Re:That's a position? by White+Flame · · Score: 1

      How many companies even HAVE a Chief Privacy Strategist?

      And how in the world were they able to score Optimus Prime for the job?

    2. Re:That's a position? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure whether you think it's cool they have it or are mocking it, but I'm quite impressed.

      It's a little bit of both. When you go to school you have a general idea of what position you want to be in, whether it be software design, server maintenance, Database Admin, Management, that kind stuff. I've never heard of a position specifically on the topic of privacy though - it sounds a bit like one made up in order to have him sound important when someone else with another title has already had that work load.

      For example, all matters of Network browsing at our company are dealt with by a Network admin, he handles the firewall, email traffic in and out, password security, yada yada yada. Anything to do with ensuring the privacy of our employees on the network would generally be his responsibility. If he were to dump those responsibilities off on someone else, you could call them the "Network Assistant" or even "Technician" of sorts. You wouldn't call him the Chief Privacy Strategist. This suggests there might be many other privacy strategists (strictly as their job) - and privacy engineers who work sole on implementing the strategies devised.

      It just seems a bit odd to have a whole department based on what can really be considered a once in a while feature. Once you stop tracking cookies, and use HTTPS on everything, you've already cut out a lot of the privacy concerns, everything else can almost be ignored. If this was a network engineer, why not just call him a network engineer, who's task is focusing on privacy issues right now.

    3. Re:That's a position? by SheeEttin · · Score: 1

      Well, there's the International Association of Privacy Professionals (which I only know about because I applied for a job there).

    4. Re:That's a position? by c0lo · · Score: 1

      How many companies even HAVE a Chief Privacy Strategist?

      On the same line: how many companies use evanghelist warriors either? (just look in slightly other directions for increased employment chances, without diminishing too much the chances to have a six figures salary/year).

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  5. Early English? by Amorymeltzer · · Score: 1

    AE certaeinly hoepe thaet noeoene haed troeuble reaeding the summaery.

    --
    I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
  6. MS Stands Up For Users?! by SaidinUnleashed · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by nametaken · · Score: 2

      A little humility can go a long way... even for huge corporations.

      They didn't have any real competition back then. Now they have to TRY to keep people, instead of having them by default. We can thank Google and Mozilla for that (among others).

    2. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by Stregano · · Score: 2

      I promise you that many people are surprised. I was an XP user after ME, then Vista, then I just said screw it. Your browser sucks and you can't make a decent OS. My opinion changed with W7 and what M$ is trying to do with IE. They have always been a giant, but as somebody stated earlier, that competition is helping them avoid travesties like ie6. At least they are making better progress now

      --
      The world is how you make it
    3. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by SaidinUnleashed · · Score: 1

      Absolutely, but it's still weird, isn't it?

      --
      Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
    4. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by makomk · · Score: 1

      Of course they are, it's in their interests to do so. They don't make their money from advertising, they make it from Windows - and if this helps sell Windows licenses it's good for the bottom line. Even if this doesn't help sell Windows directly, increasing the number of IE9 users helps decrease the number of people who can easily switch to a different OS, since it's the only major browser that's Windows-only.

    5. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by igreaterthanu · · Score: 1

      first to do so? What can this do that a Firefox add-in cannot?

      --
      I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
    6. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by uigrad_2000 · · Score: 1

      first to do so? What can this do that a Firefox add-in cannot?

      I don't think an add-in is needed. Firefox help teaches you how to set up a whitelist for cookies:

      http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Blocking%20cookies#w_block-cookies-for-all-sites

      Maybe the IE feature blocks other history tracking devices, such as flash cookies also, but there is nothing in the article that indicates this.

      --
      Free unix account: freeshell.org
    7. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by c0lo · · Score: 1

      Also, this just in, there are predictions for snowfall in Hell, this evening...
      [...]
      Everything changes...

      Hope the change worked well for you.

      Because, a heads up message to you, we are moving into the cloud: we won't need cookies to track the users anymore.

      Yours: S. Ballmer

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    8. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by spinkham · · Score: 1

      Be the default. 95+ percent of internet browsers use the browser in its default state.
      Defaults matter.

      --
      Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
    9. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by igreaterthanu · · Score: 1
      From the article:

      "Microsoft officials said the core of the opt-in feature..."

      (emphasis is mine)

      Defaults, yuep.

      --
      I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
    10. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What was wrong with IE6 exactly? The only thing wrong with IE6 is that it was ahead of it's time and it was the best internet browser for quite some time (with usage of more than 90%). It's almost 10 years old and people are still using it.

      Sure you can complain about IE6 not meeting the HTML and CSS standards, but you'd be wrong. Because there were no standards, MS tried to push web into new era (and succeeded! - think AJAX), but W3C was slow to publish standards.

    11. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by foniksonik · · Score: 2

      IE6 was fine when it was released. Nothing wrong with it now except that it is based on 10 year old tech and standards. MS did not update it. That's the real problem. They had a lot of opportunity. Even when they did update it they did all the wrong things and for all this time the Windows default browser has been holding back the web in all kinds of ways and still is.

      Go here: http://www.caniuse.com/

      Scroll down and see how IE stacks up. Then think about the installed base of IE 6/7/8 users.

      It will be another 3-5 years before we can implement many of those methods because IE is so far behind.

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
    12. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 1

      You're missing the point. Your dynamic IP doesn't change that often, especially if you have DSL for example. When you reboot the modem, it is not at all unlikely that you get the same IP, depending on the provider. Even if you don't, the dynamic one will last for days or weeks between reboots. Even if it changes daily, there is an opportunity to track your behavior as a household during a session and throw ads at you, etc. They don't necessarily care about your identifying info, just your browsing habits.

      Once they have those things and start storing things in a large DB, patterns emerge and session tokens (made with your IP, user agent, etc.) can be matched up to make credible associations that can classify users with similar habits. You may appear several times in such groupings even with different IPs, user agents, etc. Your behavior will still be classifiable and exploitable, even if it is anonymous and in many distinct session IDs.

      Cookies? They don't need no stinkin' cookies.

    13. Re:MS Stands Up For Users?! by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      You have to understand that companies aren't inherently good or inherently evil. Their purpose is to make money. Where that goal is furthered by policies which coincide with your interests, they will "stand up" for you. Other time, the same company's interests may be contrary to yours, and some other company - probably its competitor - will "stand up" for you.

      It does not mean that it's unreasonable to support such cases. After all, if you want something done, it's much easier to achieve that by having a large corporation backing the goal. Just don't read too much into this, and don't get sucked into blind loyalty (or hatred) to corporations.

  7. Re:whatever... by nametaken · · Score: 1

    "Most" people are not still using IE6. There are some, but they have bigger worries than tracking with ads. :(

  8. More Theater by SirAstral · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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!

  9. This doesn't address the problem by Distan · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:This doesn't address the problem by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 1

      The reason they are announcing this is most likely because cookies are not really necessary for robust tracking anymore, so they can throw both the public and the FTC a stale bone to gnaw on for a few years.

    2. Re:This doesn't address the problem by FatMacDaddy · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately that's more what I was thinking was the MS motivation here.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
  10. FireFox has a Do Not Track Addon by muphin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:FireFox has a Do Not Track Addon by countSudoku() · · Score: 2

      Thanks for the tip on Ghostery! I'll add that the Anonymizer Nevercookie addon is now in the Mozilla addon directory, version 0.1 mind you.

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/260205/

      Do not want; ads. I can find a product just fine. Make more noise, and I avoid your product. Pretty simple. Advertising is a waste of time and money, but not people. The people in advertising are just a waste of air and should be sewn together to make a protective CME shield for the Earth. Thank you.

      --
      This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
    2. Re:FireFox has a Do Not Track Addon by Unoriginal+Nick · · Score: 1

      Ghostery is also available as a Chrome extension.

    3. Re:FireFox has a Do Not Track Addon by janwedekind · · Score: 1

      You can also use
      * EasyPrivacy: abp:subscribe?location=https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt&title=EasyPrivacy
      * Social Annoyances: abp:subscribe?location=https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-addon.txt&title=fanboy-annoyances
      which are both lists for Adblock+. Of course one can't prevent cloud-providers (Amazon, Microsoft, ...) from tracking if web sites continue to rely on them to host their content.

  11. Re:Microsoft doesn't need ads by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

    Why is Microsoft even warring over IE? There is nothing keeping people on IE9 except that it doesn't run IE6 content properly; these people won't migrate to Firefox or Chrome for the same reason; and IE9 is essentially a continued run towards "Standards Compliance" that sounds nice and fancy and the next-big-thing but ultimately turns IE into a non-bargaining-chip for Microsoft. They'd have been better off telling users to go with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, or just shipping IE as a Webkit/V8 browser instead of Trident, or maybe just Chromium with enhanced Microsoft features and de-googlization. Then they can still badge it "Microsoft" for self-promotion but get away from the whole "war" (read: economic drain) thing, since programmers would do a ton less work and thus have time to work on other shit.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  12. This may not be total victory... by craftycoder · · Score: 1

    But every little bit helps. Users could user a swing in their favor after years of advertising networks chipping away at our privacy.

    1. Re:This may not be total victory... by umghhh · · Score: 1

      Privacy??? Who do you think care - do you think FB guys do? Reveal all and complain when it is too late that how humans work. It is of course good that there is a bit more privacy out there but I would not get all excited about this small little thing.

  13. Re:whatever... by mark72005 · · Score: 1

    A big chunk of boxes are still using IE6, particularly businesses who are in Internet Explorer EEE version hell, dependent on applications that were developed for IE6 and don't work correctly in anything else.

  14. Inprivate Browsing by Deathlizard · · Score: 1

    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!
    1. Re:Inprivate Browsing by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      Hell, I'd be glad if they just stop turning off IPF on new browser sessions.

      For those who don't know: InPrivate Filtering is a very cool (but never-used) IE8 feature where third-party content embedded in sites is tracked, and if the same content is used in more than a specificed threshold of sites, it gets blocked. For example, Google Analytics is blocked, because their script is embedded on so many sites. It also makes a decent ad-blocker, since either the ad-embedding script or the ad itself is almost always served from an external server.

      You can white-list sites, or even specific content, as well. Google Analytics may be blocked, but Google's JS libraries are not. Most advertising sites are blocked, but ProjectWonderful (mostly used on, and for, webcomics) is not. You can also set the filtering to be manual only; it will keep a list of external content but won't block it unless you tell it to (blacklisting, basically). It's not a true ad-blocker, as you can't proactively block content or block any first-party content. However, it does a good job of blocking things like Facebook from knowing where you go on the web, yet still having facebook.com itself work (because it blocks content when it's external but not when it's from the same domain as the page you're on).

      There are a few major failures of the feature, though. One of them is just branding; InPrivate Filtering has absolutely nothing to do with InPrivate Browsing (AKA "Porn Mode"). A slightly bigger one is the UI and discoverability, especially in the current IE9 beta (in IE8 there's a status bar button for it). Larger still is that it turns itself off on every new browser session, which was apparently a policy decision.

      Fix the last, and maybe second-to-last of those, and it would be great. Add an automatic updater and it would be *awesome.* You can already export and import your filter list, but it must be done manually (think Opera's ad-blocking prior to the newest version).

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    2. Re:Inprivate Browsing by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      Basically, yes, it will have constantly updated lists like AdBlock Plus. I can't tell for sure whether Microsoft intends to actually provide a list themselves, but it looks like the user can opt into any number of them. This as opposed to InPrivate filtering's heuristic identification.

    3. Re:Inprivate Browsing by Bill+Dog · · Score: 1

      For those who don't know: InPrivate Filtering is a very cool (but never-used) IE8 feature [...] Larger still is that it turns itself off on every new browser session, which was apparently a policy decision.

      I've been running IE8 for a while now and never used nor noticed this very cool feature until a few weeks ago. And didn't notice that very uncool "feature" of this feature until a few days ago! Gah! Happily, it's only adding a single registry entry to make the thing stay on. This worked for me (on x64 Vista -- not sure about XP or W7, and apparently it's different for IE9b).

      --
      Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
  15. so goodbye google analytics? by __aatirs3925 · · Score: 1

    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.

    Let's assume that 60% of the users on /. 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 :)

    1. Re:so goodbye google analytics? by newmoov · · Score: 1

      I think you hit the nail on the head. This could be a major thing. It will also kill Google revenue if it its implemented on a large scale. Hmm, maybe Microsoft knows that.

    2. Re:so goodbye google analytics? by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      ...when you block ads, you're basically taking and not giving back to the free service you are using.

      You are free to block users who block ads. If you don't want me to see your pages why do you send them to me when I request them?

      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.

      So nothing I would be interested in. In any case if I stopped blocking ads I'd be "taking" from the advertisers by your lights since I would never buy their products.

      Of course, I might not bother to block ads if they weren't designed to be annoying...

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    3. Re:so goodbye google analytics? by ewhenn · · Score: 1

      I'll probably get modded down, but this is how I feel.

      So what if google "dies"? Ever since they became a mainstream Internet name they ceased being a "do no evil" innovator. They turned cold shoulder on real net neutrality. Why should I give a shit about a company that doesn't give a shit about me?

      Now, I'm not saying that MS is any better. MS is likely motivated in crushing ads simply to financially hurt google without sustaining much damage themselves (since most of their revenue is in sales of software, not bing ads), though they won't admit it and will try to claim (in a righteous manner) that they did it to help personal users because they care about privacy...blah blah blah.

  16. Re:Microsoft doesn't need ads by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For the same reason that they started investing in IE in the first place. Netscape made a big deal of how 'browser apps' were going to turn the PC into a thin client and make the desktop OS interchangeable. Now, FireFox, Safari and Chrome, are going on about how 'web apps' are going to make the browser more important than the OS for the software that it can run.

    IE9 isn't there as a browser, it's there to sell Windows. Microsoft doesn't mind if you run FireFox on Windows, except that doing so means that it's much easier for you to switch to Mac, *NIX, or whatever. If all of your apps are web apps, then there is no lock in. This is why the IE team is suddenly enthusiastic about HTML5 - if people are going to write HTML5-based web apps (which, it seems, they are), then Microsoft wants to ensure that they run best on Windows (with or without IE, it doesn't matter to them).

    It's the same reason that MS invests so much effort in developer tools. They don't make a profit, but they make it more likely that people will have some compelling reason to buy Windows.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  17. Since this is Microsoft... by NecroPuppy · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:Since this is Microsoft... by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      * It will attract ridiculous speculation on what it may or may not do or be.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  18. I don't buy the stated reasons for the feature by jiteo · · Score: 1

    Who makes money from tracking users? Google. Microsoft is in effect attacking Google's revenue source.

  19. from the IE Blog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/12/07/ie9-and-privacy-introducing-tracking-protection-v8.aspx

  20. Re:whatever... by Velorium · · Score: 2

    Actually, you're wrong. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2 Nice try though.

  21. MBA by Mr+44 · · Score: 1

    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. "

  22. Shot fired in war between Microsoft and Google by metalmonkey · · Score: 1

    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.

  23. No substitute for a federal do-not-track LAW tho. by schwaang · · Score: 1

    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.

  24. Re:Microsoft doesn't need ads by c0lo · · Score: 1

    Sure, they would love to make big dollars on ads (Bing),

    Can you explain me why the avalanche of "In the cloud" ad campaign I'm seeing recently? Join the WindowsLive and they won't need cookies or fancy HTML5 thingies to track you anymore.
    Does Facebook need cookies to sell your data or expose you to ads?

    --
    Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  25. HTTP header by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:HTTP header by thijsh · · Score: 1
      We have that already, it's called a 'From' field and this is the spec (emphasis mine):

      The From request-header field, if given, SHOULD contain an Internet e-mail address for the human user who controls the requesting user agent. The address SHOULD be machine-usable, as defined by "mailbox" in RFC 822 [9] as updated by RFC 1123 [8]:

      From = "From" ":" mailbox

      An example is:

      From: webmaster@w3.org

      This header field MAY be used for logging purposes and as a means for identifying the source of invalid or unwanted requests. It SHOULD NOT be used as an insecure form of access protection. The interpretation of this field is that the request is being performed on behalf of the person given, who accepts responsibility for the method performed. In particular, robot agents SHOULD include this header so that the person responsible for running the robot can be contacted if problems occur on the receiving end.

      The Internet e-mail address in this field MAY be separate from the Internet host which issued the request. For example, when a request is passed through a proxy the original issuer's address SHOULD be used.

      The client SHOULD NOT send the From header field without the user's approval, as it might conflict with the user's privacy interests or their site's security policy. It is strongly recommended that the user be able to disable, enable, and modify the value of this field at any time prior to a request.

      We could amend this definition to include the definition: No from field implies that the user wishes not to be tracked. Or to prevent ambiguity that a standard value of 'anonymous@anonymous' would be used by all browsers indicating the same. For all users wishing to be tracked a value of UNIQUE_GENERATED_CODE@ORGANIZATION would be used to allow anonymous tracking. No cookies needed and adheres to current HTTP spec.

  26. Re:whatever... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Who gives a shit about who tracks those machines? What matters is typically what you do home.

  27. Re:Isn't Mozilla open source? by Eskarel · · Score: 1

    It is, but if you've ever tried maintaining a patch set for a third party application without any cooperation from said third party you'll know it's bloody painful. If said third party is actively working against you then it's just not worth bothering with.

  28. Re:No substitute for a federal do-not-track LAW th by geminidomino · · Score: 1

    Careful what you wish for... Remember what happened when we finally got a so-called "anti-spam" law...

  29. Playing Devil's Advocate, and I do mean Devil. by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  30. Will every feature of IE9 be posted here ? by eulernet · · Score: 1

    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 !

    1. Re:Will every feature of IE9 be posted here ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This one is a big deal because it's an ad-blocker and no other browser actually builds one in yet. Mozilla backed out of doing so recently. It's also a big deal because privacy is a big deal.

      "Microsoft is very well known for announcing products that were released very late or even never in some cases."

      Well, this can't possibly be late, because no release date has been announced. I would bet money that IE9 is released though :|.

      "Why do we have to comment on a such a feature, obviously designed to piss off Google ?"

      If you've read the news recently, browser privacy is kind of a big deal lately with multiple governments demanding better web privacy. This honestly seems more designed to address that.

      "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 ?" ...the beta of IE9 was less than two months ago. The last preview build was less than three weeks ago.

      "Meanwhile, Google and Apple release products without announcing them 6 months before, and push their updates regularly."

      What are you talking about? Google's browser gets all kinds of announcements; you can't turn around without seeing a Chrome announcement coupled with confusion about their versioning scheme. Besides, transparency is good, even if sometimes it never comes to light. Please stop telling large companies to keep secrets.

      "Oh, and I'm pretty sure that IE9 will include IE5/IE6/IE7/IE8 rendering engines à la DirectX, for old sites' compatibility."

      Not IE6. IE5 (aka quirks mode, all browsers emulate to a degree), IE7, and IE8 are emulated for that reason.

  31. Bye Design by dazlari · · Score: 1

    Designing in the design phase. How novel.

  32. Re:No substitute for a federal do-not-track LAW th by ewhenn · · Score: 1

    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".

  33. Re:No substitute for a federal do-not-track LAW th by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    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?

  34. Funny, but this is where it goes by cdrguru · · Score: 1

    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.

  35. Not totally buying it by saboosh · · Score: 1

    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

  36. Re:whatever... by hatchet · · Score: 1

    based on w3 reports, IE6 usage is down to 4.8% http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp
    Also note that most IE6 users are using it in their work environments, where they are bound to IE6 because of enterprise software they use (and upgrades are costly)

  37. Re:whatever... by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 1

    AFAIK w3schools.com browser stats are based on visitors to their own site -- so not typical users. Which explains why Firefox has the greatest share, since it's historically been the best browser for web-devs.

  38. Re:No substitute for a federal do-not-track LAW th by ducomputergeek · · Score: 1

    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.
  39. Re: Peter Cullen! by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 1

    "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
  40. Re:Microsoft doesn't need ads by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

    - WebDAV

    The first thing your security team will tell you is "remove this shit as fast as you can."

    - TWAIN (DynamicSoft started supporting chrome, but installation must be manual)

    Isn't that the scanner infrastructure? I've never heard of this in IE.

    - Digital signing

    What does this have to do with browsers?

    - No enterprise policies in chrome (you can't prevent users from saving files or restricting content)

    Smokescreen, but managers like to feel good. As for restricting content, proxy servers are the only way. It's notable our proxy server blocks anything but IE and Firefox, yet I make SRWare Iron jump around the restrictions by pretending it's Firefox. Run as a portable app.

    - Problems with NTLM credentials

    Yes, that's annoying when using Sharepoint, which is shitty in all respects. Their "wiki" is even more primitive than Geocities was in 1995. Sharepoint et al don't work well at all in anything but IE either, for reasons I can't understand. I've been tempted to have Firefox and Chrome UA spoof to see what happens.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  41. Serious Problem With Mozilla by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 1

    Mozilla stopped working on a similar feature for Firefox after pressure from advertisers

    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.
    1. Re:Serious Problem With Mozilla by dveditz · · Score: 1

      The "pressure from advertisers" came after the feature was turned off because it didn't work right: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=570630#c15

      We're also investigating a different approach of double-keying cookies with the primary and 3rd-party domains, which has the advantage of preventing advertisers from correlating your visits across sites within a session. This breaks even more legitimate things (as Opera also found when they experimented with this) so we're still brainstorming.

  42. Cookies? Privacy Settings? Now this... by Strixy · · Score: 1

    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?

  43. Privacy trumps OSS by glittermage · · Score: 1

    If IE does it and Mozilla doesn't I'll stop using Firefox.

    1. Re:Privacy trumps OSS by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      The beauty of OSS is that you (or someone else who can handle it) can fork Firefox and add this feature to it.

  44. Congressional hearing on "Do Not Track" by janwedekind · · Score: 1

    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.