Advertisers Never Intended To Honor DNT

Missing the Point? by kraln · 2012-09-23 01:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

Isn't that missing the entire point? Or is the do-not-track specification one of those Orwellian-titled things whereby the net effect is exactly the opposite of the name?

Re:Missing the Point? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 01:42 · Score: 5, Informative

Isn't that missing the entire point?
Maybe, but not collecting and monetising the data is missing the point of trying to make money, and we can't have that now can we?!
They don't seem too different to the music industry: they can't quite grasp that pissing people off may be a bad way to try making money out of them, and if you try to avoid their countermeasures you're obviously someone who wants something for nothing and a terrible person.
Re:Missing the Point? by Enter+the+Shoggoth · 2012-09-23 01:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

Isn't that missing the entire point? Or is the do-not-track specification one of those Orwellian-titled things whereby the net effect is exactly the opposite of the name?
No it's just that advertisers are a bunch of assholes who think that free speech = unfettered right to harass everyone even when they're sleeping, eating, screwing, working or taking a dump.
It's about time people woke up and realised that there should be limits to what _both_ companies and governments aught to be able to do.

--
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Re:Missing the Point? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 01:47 · Score: 2, Informative

Eh, I'd say it's more about time people started using NoScript, Ghostery and Adblock Plus on a large scale...
Re:Missing the Point? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 02:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

In any other civilised nation, the government. But of course in America, that'll never happen
Re:Missing the Point? by Richard_at_work · 2012-09-23 02:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why should they honour it? It's the browser which is voluntarily giving out identifiable data! Sort your browser out if you don't want to be tracked.
DNT is the same as saying passwords aren't required, because there's a "do not impersonate me" standard.
Re:Missing the Point? by Nursie · 2012-09-23 02:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

I don't think I ever understood the point in the first place.
A polite request to please not track you, made to an industry that exists solely to make money out of tracking people?
Yeah, that was going to work...
Re:Missing the Point? by SomeKDEUser · 2012-09-23 03:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

So you see no difference between an elected administration and a private entity with no democratic oversight?
At the end of the day, the reason why companies are let doing perfectly dickish things in the US is people believe that the government would be worse. And so vote for people who promise they'll let companies be dicks.
The stupid, it hurts.
Re:Missing the Point? by TubeSteak · 2012-09-23 03:09 · Score: 2

Why should they honour it?
Because it respects the social compact between businesses and the citizens they serve.
Instead, we have a prisoners dilemma where one prisoner has nothing to lose *and* can tweak the rules if they bribe^W lobby the rule makers.

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[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Re:Missing the Point? by just_a_monkey · 2012-09-23 03:20 · Score: 2

The point here is "voluntary". If it was voluntary to display the number plate, you should sort your car out if you don't want it to display yours, and I should be allowed to record and track whatever I wanted to.

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How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Re:Missing the Point? by Richard_at_work · 2012-09-23 03:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Social compact" - what pretentious bollocks.
Your browser is leaking your info - fix that. Trying to stop people taking advantage is so utterly the wrong approach here, its the same as any security related issue - make your end as secure as you possibly can, because the world is a big wide open and very bad place. You cannot control the other end, but you can control what you are leaking.
Also, pathetic hacks like DNT do not work even when backed with legal status - the internet is not one jurisdiction, but your browser certainly is... fix your data leakage at the source, not at the receiving end.
Re:Missing the Point? by fast+turtle · 2012-09-23 03:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

And the first thing that the Mozilla Devs need to do is delete the Unique ID for Safe Browsing from the firefox code base as it's a cookie that can't be deleted. For those using Firefox and it's derivitives, change the Safe Browsing ID to "0" and help Poisson Googles Data. What really bothers me about this issue is that even when "In Private" browsing is enabled, this unique ID is being passed to Google, in direct violation of my intentions when entering "In Private" mode. This is just one more reason I rarely use Firefox. Opera has a similar feature and I suspect it does the same. Sorry but Safe Browsing needs to be completely anonymous instead of tracking us like it does now.

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Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Re:Missing the Point? by Richard_at_work · 2012-09-23 03:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

Stop accepting cookies from anyone except the first origin website for a start - advertisers use their own cookies to track you across sites, using site specific cookies makes tracking you across sites extremely hard. Session cookies aren't an issue - if you are using my website, you don't have any leg to stand on when asking me to not track your usage of my website.
Remove a lot of information from the user agent string. Take it back to browser name, major number, minor number.
Stop allowing plug ins etc to add user agent detail or request header lines.
Treat third party images the same way as cookies.
Rigidly enforce plugin security, so things like Flash cannot maintain cookies etc outside of the browsers control.
Etc etc etc.
There are plenty of things that the browsers need to fess up and fix before DNT can be considered to not be a joke - *asking* third parties not to do "X" when you are leaking that data voluntarily to them each time you request an object is just stupid.
If this was anything else, the onus would be on the one leaking the information - if your medical records were being leaked through system insecurity then the one being decried here on Slashdot would be the source of the leak, not the recipient! Why is this any different?
Re:Missing the Point? by TheGratefulNet · 2012-09-23 04:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

you missed my biggie: deinstall flash.
if I need a YT video, I run 'youtube-dl'. not only do I get selectivity in what flash gets run on my system but I get to keep a copy of the video in case I want it, later. and of course, I get no 'buffering' bullshit.
I have not found a single reason to have flash installed in a browser. but I admit I'm very willing to go without the latest 'linked video' from this or that idiot. if the video is not something I can get spam-free, I do without.
not having flash installed was one of the smartest things I've done in a long time. I'm glad that info got to me very early on.

--

--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Re:Missing the Point? by green1 · 2012-09-23 04:13 · Score: 2

Yes, privacy is when you block every attempt to identify you, track you, or send you any information you don't want.
Spite is when you start sending them hate mail, having their executives tailed every minute of the day, or generally treat them the same way they normally treat us.
Re:Missing the Point? by amck · 2012-09-23 04:13 · Score: 2

Because, as stated by Google, it isn't.
I will use Google and get / give a degraded service in Privacy mode by giving them less information, possibly getting more ads from Google and a less-targeted response.
With Google, the idea (the implicit "contract") was that your data was available and used by Google for targetted advertising, but not passed to third parties. I don't mind Google knowing of my fondness for Twinkies, and my purchasing of them, but I _do_ mind if my health insurer knows, for example.

--
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
Re:Missing the Point? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 05:22 · Score: 2, Informative

DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. For these reasons, DuckDuckGo takes the approach to not collect any personal information. The decisions of whether and how to comply with law enforcement requests, whether and how to anonymize data, and how to best protect your information from hackers are out of our hands. Your search history is safe with us because it cannot be tied to you in any way. When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address. Because this information could be used to link you to your searches, we do not log (store) it at all. This is a very unusual practice, but we feel it is an important step to protect your privacy.
Re:Missing the Point? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 05:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

Mozilla ... Unique ID for Safe Browsing
Could somebody give me a link to info about this? Google isn't turning up very much about this.
I'd like to know what my Firefox unique ID is, and how to control it.
Re:Missing the Point? by 10101001+10101001 · 2012-09-23 07:14 · Score: 2

Stop accepting cookies from anyone except the first origin website for a start - advertisers use their own cookies to track you across sites, using site specific cookies makes tracking you across sites extremely hard.
Um, not really. As you later note, advertisers can use custom named images (based upon the requesting ip address). Hell, just the ip address is often enough a lot of the time, especially if you're using ipv6.

Session cookies aren't an issue - if you are using my website, you don't have any leg to stand on when asking me to not track your usage of my website.
Except "session" cookies merely means "not written to disk cache" cookies, which still allows for lots of tracking if you rarely close your browser--a real possibility if you have a laptop and simply sleep/wake it a lot. To say it's not a issue misses the obvious: if an advertiser figures out who you are very early in each session, then effectively they can track you pretty nearly as much as if they were permanent cookies. Ie, session cookies are only useful so long as browsers leak so little information that you can't be uniquely identified through other means, like say, an ip address.

Remove a lot of information from the user agent string. Take it back to browser name, major number, minor number.
Great idea, except considering the rapid pace of browser versioning and the not so rapid pace of browser adoption, even the version number is a good way to narrow down the requester.

Stop allowing plug ins etc to add user agent detail or request header lines.
Great in theory. In practice, plugins expose support for different file types that the server probably should know about to return sensible results. I mean, yea, it'd be great if everything was writtable in the context of "it'll all fallback gracefully whatever I do", but it doesn't work that way in the real world, which basically mandates some sort of javascript wrapper if you choose to use any sort of plugin.

Treat third party images the same way as cookies.
Well, that'll break a significant part of the web, especially since there's no sensible basis to limit it to just images. It really should sensible extent to any object that can be used to track someone, which translates into anything that can be named. Other than that, great idea.

Rigidly enforce plugin security, so things like Flash cannot maintain cookies etc outside of the browsers control.
And what sort of magic do you propose to give the browser the omniscience to know that a bit of information is a cookie or not? Or should it simply bar all information transferal of any kind to-from a plugin? Or perhaps just bar all sorts of writes to the filesystem, turning all plugin data into session data? The latter only mitigates the issues, really.

There are plenty of things that the browsers need to fess up and fix before DNT can be considered to not be a joke - *asking* third parties not to do "X" when you are leaking that data voluntarily to them each time you request an object is just stupid.
As much as I agree with the former, DNT will always be a joke precisely because no matter how much browser developers try to not leak unique information, there's plenty of third party advertisers who are plain assholes who, if anything, will actively try to track harder DNT people precisely because they're a niche market who otherwise might not get many ads.

If this was anything else, the onus would be on the one leaking the information - if your medical records were being leaked through system insecurity then the one being decried here on Slashdot would be the source of the leak, not the recipient! Why is this any different?
Perhaps because it's close to impossible to *not

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Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Re:Missing the Point? by vux984 · 2012-09-23 08:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

Your browser is leaking your info - fix that.
Good idea.
Trying to stop people taking advantage is so utterly the wrong approach here, its the same as any security related issue - make your end as secure as you possibly can, because the world is a big wide open and very bad place. You cannot control the other end, but you can control what you are leaking.
Of course you can, and should pass laws and attempt to control the other end as best you can. What planet do you come from?
Because down here, we take a two pronged approach to problems like this... to deal with home invasions we invented walls and doors and locks and keys and motion sensors and alarms, and so on. You want to be secure in your home, secure it.
But we didn't stop there, we also made home invasions illegal, tresspassing, break and enter, and so on.
Why do you advocate only doing half when it comes to the internet?
pathetic hacks like DNT do not work even when backed with legal status - the internet is not one jurisdiction,
So, many of the big advertising firms are based out of this country, or have a physical presence in the country, and many more operate out of countries we have treaties with. Sure that doesn't reach absolutely everyone out there, but the reach is pretty decent. Any particular reason we shouldn't bother at all?
Re:Missing the Point? by dkf · 2012-09-23 13:39 · Score: 2

help Poisson Googles Data
That sounds fishy to me.

--
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"

So in other words... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 01:39 · Score: 3, Informative

...they will still track.

This is where someone will say... by someone1234 · 2012-09-23 01:39 · Score: 5, Informative

What ads? I use noscript and adblock.

--
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry

Re:This is where someone will say... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 01:57 · Score: 2, Informative

Don't forget Ghostery.
Re:This is where someone will say... by houghi · 2012-09-23 02:09 · Score: 2

On top of noscript and adblock, I block complete domains with http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
And I also edit the css of the most visited websites with http://userstyles.org/

--
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Re:This is where someone will say... by JayRott · 2012-09-23 02:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

Of course, by doing this you get folks screaming "You are STEALING content! How do the content creators get paid?!?" I have no problem with websites making a buck, and I would even go back to viewing ads as long as they are not obnoxious or folowing me around the entire net. If they can't respect me enough to honor my choices I can't respect them enough to loan them my eyeballs. The internet was a huge push forward for information sharing, but I simply can't get behind every internet user having a dossier encompassing every site they visit or every purchase they make used for god-knows-what by god-knows-who!
Re:This is where someone will say... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 02:29 · Score: 5, Informative

Don't forget Ghostery.
Indeed, don't forget to avoid it. it is a product of the advertising industry itself, specifically Evidon.
Don't you think they love the metrics it provides about the types of ads and beacons that people are choosing to block?
Let's see what Ghostery's maker says:

That technology includes Ghostery, Evidon’s browser tool that reports on data collection across 26 million websites and informs the company’s business control solutions.
Re:This is where someone will say... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-09-23 02:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

I would even go back to viewing ads as long as they are not obnoxious
As far as I am concerned, the only advertisements that are not obnoxious are the ones that I specifically ask for. When do I specifically ask for advertising? When I search for products on Amazon, when I go to Craigslist, when I use Google Shopping to compare prices, etc. It is no surprise that those things are so overwhelmingly successful (both in terms of money and in terms of utilization): there is no incentive for anyone to block them, because they are giving people something useful and something people want.

The reason advertisers have such a bizarre interpretation of do-not-track is that they know they cannot make any money by respecting people. That's why I use ABP and NoScript: advertisers do not respect me, so I will not let them consume my screen space, CPU cycles or bandwidth.

As for the poor websites that claim they will go under without advertisers...well, maybe they should stand up for their users and say, "No, obnoxious, disrespectful advertising is not allowed on this website." What happened to just showing me a picture that says, "This product is better than the rest!" and leaving it at that?

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Palm trees and 8
Re:This is where someone will say... by Charliemopps · 2012-09-23 03:08 · Score: 2

That's cute. And you think that does ANYTHING other than block the targeted ads? If the only thing bad about this were the targeted ads, we wouldn't have a problem. I'd actually prefer more relevant ads. The problem is the collection of the data. When you go to nearly any website on the net, they track everything you do there. Every click you make, every form you fill out, everything. Even if they don't have your name, they have your IP, your browser, your OS... enough data to uniquely identify you. Then those sites share that data with marketing SAS firms that collate, and return sales leads. You didn't sign into that pornsite when you were looking at all that midget porn? That's alright, they ship your activity off to the marketing firm who also has a contract with Newegg, where you have an account with your full name, address, phone number etc.... They compare your IP and other details, figure out who you are and sell it back to the midget porn site. Now it's 6pm on a Tuesday, you're in the middle of dinner with your familly and your wife mentions that she got a call today about a great deal on a years subscription to assbangingmidgets.com do you think she should sign up?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Soon they will be able to predict much of your behavior and manipulate you at their whim, simply based on what your interests are. Relying on adblock is about as close to having your head in the sand as you can get.
Re:This is where someone will say... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 03:51 · Score: 5, Informative

You have to volunteer that data by activating their ghostrank option. There was a AMA on reddit where the devs have said that you can unpack the archive and examine the data yourselves if you don't trust them. Apparently all it sends back to them is what advertisers ghostery saw.
Re:This is where someone will say... by Tom · 2012-09-23 21:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

"You are STEALING content! How do the content creators get paid?!?"
Content creators do not have a right to have their business model work out. Besides, most ads pay per click, not per view these days (though both kinds still exist).
There are many other business models. An online game of mine (BattleMaster) runs entirely on donations, for example. I'm very proud of having been able to run this game for 12 years now, and there has never been a single banner or pop-up ad on the site. Not in the game, not in the wiki, not in the forum.
Does it allow me to quit my day job? Nope. Does it pay for its own bills (hosting, etc.)? Absolutely.
There are Freemium models, there are subscription models like The Onion where you get a few free articles and then they ask you to subscribe. And, of course, there is the old "You want something? Pay up and you get it." system. You know, the one that mankind has been using for a few thousand years?
The Internet has been and still is experimenting with various ways of making money. If yours doesn't work out, stop whining and start taking the possibility into consideration that your business model is flawed.

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Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org

Wasn't the point... by toxickitty · 2012-09-23 01:42 · Score: 5, Informative

Wasn't the whole point of this to encourage advertisers to not track and if they do you have a leg to stand on in a court because you specifically made it clear you did not want to be tracked?

Re:Wasn't the point... by rudy_wayne · 2012-09-23 01:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

Wasn't the whole point of this to encourage advertisers to not track

Yes, that is the idea. However, DNT is entirely voluntary. And if you really thought that advertisers were going to honor DNT, then you are extremely stupid.

Please don't eat me by Chemisor · 2012-09-23 01:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Please don't eat me, brother Wolf!" cried the Rabbit. "Aw, all right." said the Wolf, rolling his eyes. "I'll just trade you to brother Fox for some hens. Is that ok with you?"

Semantics by TemperedAlchemist · 2012-09-23 01:43 · Score: 4, Informative

It's do not track not cover up track. I think these fellas need a course in remedial grammar.

There are times I do want, say, Google to keep my data, and I don't care if they share it -- like if I search for Minecraft stuffs, I want MC stuff to appear on my search. Or if I search a topic and I'd rather be swayed towards more reliable sources that I would frequent rather than like, "HOMEOPATHY MAGIC QUANTUM JUICE PANACEA MAKE MONEY FROM HOME."

For everthing else, there's Duck Duck Go

That's OK by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-23 01:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

I have my browsers not respect their wishes on page composition and ad presentation, so I don't really expect them to respect my do-not-track header either. Their domains would first have to make it past my DNS blackhole anyway.

Where can I buy it... by sinij · 2012-09-23 01:46 · Score: 4, Funny

They keep showing me adds for 127.0.0.1, but I can't seem to find where to by this great product. Anyone has any idea?

Re:Where can I buy it... by JustOK · 2012-09-23 02:11 · Score: 3, Funny

Home Depot, check your local area.

--
rewriting history since 2109

why adblock exists by myNameIsNotImportant · 2012-09-23 01:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

and that is why i use and will continue to use adblock. the advertisers have given me no reason to trust them.

Duh.... by Lumpy · 2012-09-23 02:00 · Score: 2

From the moment I saw the Do not Track idea come up, I was telling people that advertisers will not car and not honor it. the ONLY way you can set your own do not track is by using adblockers and other tools to strip out their crud. IF they wont honor your do not track, you no longer have to honor seeing their ad's. The only thing they can track by now is your IP address and the browser string if you install all the privacy plugins for firefox or Chrome. it strips their bugs, cookies, etc... and I am waiting for someone to start randomizing the browser string to further make their tracking harder.

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Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.

Color me astonished! by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-09-23 02:10 · Score: 3, Funny

Advertisers are ignoring what the user wants and using your data any way they see fit just because they can?

Know what else they're tracking and selling to other advertisers? Your do-not-track setting.

Like they say: by Samuel+Dravis · 2012-09-23 02:42 · Score: 2

It's very difficult to communicate with someone when their livelihood is dependent on not understanding.

In other news... by epp_b · 2012-09-23 02:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

Water is wet, grass is green and space is big.

Honestly, you have to be quite naive and downright stupid to expect anything else.

If you provide your attacker (advertisers), who have a vested interest in ignoring the flag, with the means to ignore the flag, it's not going to work.

If Alice asks Charlie, a known snooper, to deliver a message to Bob and she expects Charlie not to take a peek, it's going to take more than writing "don't look, Charlie, tee hee hee!" at the top of the message.

This was dumb idea from the very beginning and destined to explode on the launch pad. Besides, browsers already have an in-built functionality to reject third-party cookies, which pretty much takes care of the problem. Yes, there are some clever and covert ways of doing it without cookies (hidden iframes, forms and whatnot), but there's no reason browsers can't reject those on a whitelist basis (some online software will use these hidden elements legitimately).

we need to start a PAC, 'browsers unitied' maybe? by TheGratefulNet · 2012-09-23 02:59 · Score: 2

being able to browse the internet is a form of free speech.

I propose that our PAC lobby congress for its proper free speech rights.

blocking ads is a form of free speech.

please donate to Browsers United so we can get our voices heard.

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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."

No ads browsing is a fallacy by FlynnMP3 · 2012-09-23 03:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

Consider the alternative. Would you rather pay for the 10 or so sites that you visit on a daily basis? That's been tried and tried and tried and has always failed so far. Maybe someday in the future the magic combination of micro transactions and transparency will be stumbled upon, but it hasn't happened yet. That, and the advertising forces still believe that advertising works. A lot of people don't care about being advertised to, and in some cases they actually prefer it. So for significantly large values of stupidity or apathy, the advertising companies aren't wrong.

The technically able and the ones who care about being subjected to unhealthy amounts of lowest common denominator dreck have tools they use (Firefox, adblock plus, noscript, ghostery, etc.) to avoid the worst of it. Fortunately for them, their mostly free and unfettered access is payed for mainly by those who don't and the small percentage of overlap between the 2 sets.

Being a geek is fun and in this case healthier.

Re:No ads browsing is a fallacy by TheGratefulNet · 2012-09-23 04:19 · Score: 2

micropayments were NEVER given a fair try.
wonder why.
my view: advertisers saw that as a threat and shut it the hell down (the idea).
I'd be happy to donate a penny here and a penny there if it means that the scourge known as 'push advertising' would go away.
however, I'm not willing to pay for a site that also double dips in ads.

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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Re:No ads browsing is a fallacy by sjames · 2012-09-23 06:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, a fair number of people tried to offer an olive branch in the form of allowing advertising but not tracking people like animals. The advertisers grabbed that olive branch and poked them in the eye with it, so here we are.
The next move will be either total blocking of ads or websites finding some way to enforce no tracking on the advertisers they work with.
The very few advertisers that actually have a modicum of respect for the people they advertise to would be wise to petition the FTC to regulate advertising firmly before people just totally shut them out.

The explanation of DNT by betterunixthanunix · 2012-09-23 04:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

I think DNT is absurd too, but that is because I long ago accepted that advertisers are untrustworthy and not worthy of any respect. However, here is the theory of DNT:

Website operators are increasingly concerned about ABP, because they rely on advertising revenue to pay the bills
Browser vendors have added pop-up blocking support by default; ad blockers may be added by default as well if advertisers do not start respecting users
Advertisers claimed that if people asked not to be tracked, they won't be tracked; users find that asking every advertiser everywhere not to track them is exceedingly difficult.
Advertisers who fail to follow a DNT request would be black sheep, and a country could theoretically pass a law requiring DNT compliance (but how would people know if DNT was being ignored?)

In other words, DNT is predicated on the idea that advertisers will actually respect user wishes, because otherwise users will respond by blocking ads. The point of this article is that advertisers have shown that they do not respect user wishes; the logical conclusion should be that browsers start including things like ABP by default, until advertisers start respecting DNT again (but that won't happen, so we'll just make ad blocking a standard browser feature). Browser makers must include ad blocking or else DNT will truly be pointless; users, by and large, will not install ad blocking extensions on their own.

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Palm trees and 8

More elaborate schemes? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-09-23 04:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

How about we just go back to pushing ad blocking software? The point of DNT was to show that ad blocking is not necessary, because advertisers will respect users if they can just get a little feedback. Now we see that that is untrue, so let's ditch DNT and get back to ABP etc.

The whole argument for DNT is that advertisers will be compelled to follow it, because if they do not do so then users will start blocking ads. Advertisers are not respecting DNT, so we have to deploy ad blockers now, or else DNT was truly pointless.

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Palm trees and 8

Re:More elaborate schemes? by SScorpio · 2012-09-23 04:33 · Score: 3, Informative

I don't feel that ABP is enough anymore. I started using Ghostery and it blocks a lot of things that ABP lets through.
Yes ABP is great for blocking ads, but Ghostery will block the tracking cookies ABP doesn't care about. A plus for Ghostery is it remove all of the +1, Facebook, and Twitter links from around the web that I could care less about.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by Emetophobe · 2012-09-23 05:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Yes ABP is great for blocking ads, but Ghostery will block the tracking cookies ABP doesn't care about.. A plus for Ghostery is it remove all of the +1, Facebook, and Twitter links from around the web that I could care less about.
ABP can do that aswell if you subscribe to the Anti-Social filter. Scroll to the very bottom of this page: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions. It's under Miscellaneous.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by Elwood+P+Dowd · 2012-09-23 05:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

I think it would be more harmful to those people junking up the web if we made a browser extension that clicked on every +1, like, and follow button you surf past.

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There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by Mike+Buddha · 2012-09-23 06:18 · Score: 2

But Ad-Block can replace all the ads with pictures of kittens. Does your precious Ghostery do this?

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by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by Platinumrat · 2012-09-23 09:41 · Score: 3, Funny

Is that a Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty, little ball of fur...
Re:More elaborate schemes? by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-23 12:06 · Score: 2

The point of DNT was to have a formal way to request no tracking, which is useless by itself, but is a necessary tool to implement various consumer privacy laws, such as the EU-wide "cookie directive". It means that, if some advertiser can be shown to not respect your choice to not be tracked, you can take them to court. So it's a legal tool, not a technical tool.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by siride · 2012-09-23 12:59 · Score: 2

But I'm not an ignoramus. In fact, I understand perfectly well that idioms often don't mean what their constituent parts mean. I also understand that language isn't about making statements that are rigorous according to formal logic. Instead, we have things like tone, connotation, emphasis and so on.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by siride · 2012-09-23 16:30 · Score: 2

Yes, the original idiom was "couldn't care less", but the "not" has been dropped for any of a variety of proposed reasons, none of them having to do with abject stupidity (the fact that a great number of well-read and highly-educated people also say "could care less" when not being careful in their speech should tell you as much). You know, it's that sort of moralizing about people's character based solely on some technicality of how they speak that I find to be disgustingly judgmental and stupid, to boot. Why is it stupid? It's a stupid line of thinking because it is built on willful ignorance (the definition of stupid). You don't know why people say what they say, but you're sure that since it's not standard, it must be wrong and the product of some sort of mental deficit. That's quite a leap, and to take that leap without any supporting evidence and with the nearly express goal of belittling people is a sign of true arrogance and douchebaggery. It's all too common on the Internet, but it is, of course, to be found in more traditional sources of media. People have complained about shifts in language since there has been language to complain about it.
For what it's worth, "could care less" has a meaning that is well-known and unambiguous. Nobody would hear "could care less" and think that the speaker cared by some amount (according to the phrase's technical meaning). Any time a pedant comes along to call someone out on their usage, they never first ask "did you mean that you did care, or did you mean that you didn't?" No, the meaning is already clear: the speaker/writer did not care at all. The correction thus immediately follows, as does a diatribe, short or long, about the intelligence of the person who "misused" the idiom. Like it or not, the mutated idiom is unambiguous, well-known and clear. There is no deficit in communication when using it. It is not at all a problem and people like you need to just let it go. It's not going away and it doesn't need to. Seriously, deal with it.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by X0563511 · 2012-09-23 16:37 · Score: 2

Then the data miners could just filter it out.
It's one thing to waste bandwidth, but polluting their data is worth so much more.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:More elaborate schemes? by Decker-Mage · 2012-09-23 20:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

And that's the point that should be hammered at them, that if a voluntary scheme isn't followed, we resort to tools that allow us to pollute their data. I already have the code to 'weaponize' this, should I go that route, and it wouldn't exactly take a whole lot of people (percentage-wise) to pollute the databases. Question is: when/if we organize?

--
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Re:More elaborate schemes? by God+Of+Atheism · 2012-09-23 21:32 · Score: 2

Add Better Privacy to that as well, to remove flash cookies.
Re:More elaborate schemes? by Golden_Rider · 2012-09-23 21:34 · Score: 2

For what it's worth, "could care less" has a meaning that is well-known and unambiguous. Nobody would hear "could care less" and think that the speaker cared by some amount (according to the phrase's technical meaning). Any time a pedant comes along to call someone out on their usage, they never first ask "did you mean that you did care, or did you mean that you didn't?" No, the meaning is already clear: the speaker/writer did not care at all.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
I am from Germany, and the first couple times I read "could care less" I was quite confused about what the poster actually meant. Now, it is just annoying, the same way as somebody writing "their" instead of "they're" or using a "plural apostrophe" as in "several CD's".

"He said, she said"? by mrbene · 2012-09-23 04:30 · Score: 2

Ed Bott says that Sarah Downey (Privacy Advocate) says that the IAB says that the IAB membership "will continue to monetize data".

Except that to become an IAB member, a company must comply to the IAB code of conduct, which includes the self-regulatory program for online behavioral targeting. This includes the requirement of providing a consumer choice mechanism, which has been implemented for the industry at www.aboutads.info.

I guess fact checking was too much for Ed...

woo by nomadic · 2012-09-23 04:37 · Score: 2

That's libertarianism for you. If you don't want to be tracked don't go to those websites.

Which was first: Chicken or Egg? by bussdriver · 2012-09-23 04:37 · Score: 2

DNT is a starting point (an egg) it could grow into something useful or die. Failure is not "egg on your face" because you have to take the 1st step for the possibilities to open up.

One possible solution:
Politicians pass a law saying how ad corps must respect DNT. It is far less likely to pass such a law without the technology in place; they have a hard time making industry implement any features.

--
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news

If ignoring DNT is ok... by cbreak · 2012-09-23 06:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

...then I guess NoScript and AddBlock are fair game. Excellent. Advertisers should not forget that they depend on our attention, and we're not obligated to give it to them.

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