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Yahoo Will Ignore IE 10's "Do Not Track"
dsinc writes "And so it begins... Yahoo has made it official: it won't honor the Do Not Track request issued by Internet Explorer 10. Their justification? '[T]he DNT signal from IE10 doesn't express user intent" and "DNT can be easily abused.'" Wonder what percentage of users would rather be tracked by default.
See now, the trouble here is that all of these privacy settings rely on corporate "good will", when there is no such thing.
Really, the only way to ensure your privacy is extreme paranoia. Sorry.
To ignore Yahoo till it dies a nice slow death....
Even Apache doesn't honor DNT if it has been issued by IE10
http://www.pcworld.com/article/262150/apache_web_servers_will_ignore_ie10s_do_not_track_settings.html
Is it really a surprise that a failing business like Yahoo! would ignore its users in an attempt to make money?
Look, the obvious lesson here is that no business can be trusted to keep secrets. Also: Water is wet, fire is hot. Don't give out anything you don't want to get out there, no matter what some PHB promises you.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Yahoo leads the way forward, whether it is in their innovative email platform with intuitive ui (ads), their reporting (entertainming/advertising) with an insightful comments from the community (tea partying racists), or their home page that I haven't visited but I hear has relevant content (ads) - Yahoo is the future. We can't expect anything less than a rejection of IE's fascist desire to make advertising less lucrative. After all, users want nothing more than for the advertising they see to be as intrusive and lucrative for companies as possible.
They should have made a huge startup dialog "Do you want to be tracked" and achieved 90+% block without these complaints. They might still have ignored it but at least it would have been clearly a DNT violation
Changing the DNT request text from: "DNT (Default)" to "DNT (User's Choice)" Now Yahoo! will be ignoring the wishes of the user.
-this kindergarten bitch game of appealing to a bunch of assholes to comply with a pre-poisoned protocol of centrally regulated tracking. Let this be a binary battle instead, where a distinct line of intelligent development and availability divides those who strive for privacy and those who expect it. Really, I find myself utterly perplexed that browsers are not the culprit. With ANY browser, most people have essentially two choices: Sell your soul to "Add Ons", or deal with a shiny and fast POS. I think the fact that mainstream browsers require a slew of additions to ascend from the cyber-toilet, deserves some healthy resentment.
The rule on private property is that you do not have permission to use it unless and until the property owner says you do. If he doesn't say anything, you don't have permission.
The rule about inviting yourself into someone else's home is that you don't have the right to unless they say you can. If they don't say, you don't have permission.
Our world's full of things where a lack of explicit permission means you don't have permission. Now, as far as the site itself is concerned I don't object to them tracking what I do on that site. It's their site, I can't expect to access it without them knowing what I'm doing. But a third party, it's not their site. Why should the rule not be that, absent my express permission for them to track my comings and goings, they do not have permission?
What browser makers really need to do to prevent tracking is to simply clear cookies when you close your browser. For good measure also clear flash and silverlight cookies. That prevents persistent tracking. It works perfectly for me. I've never needed do not track.
Can't beat their sports coverage, live score tracking, and their collection of sports writers. Yahoo is still the best if you are trying to track numerous college or pro football games on Saturday or Sunday. CBSsports.com is a close second. ESPN's website is too flash-heavy, and slow to load most pages.
What's yahoo?
And I definitely won't use them now. They can rot.
Now I know to do full ad and cookie blocking for yahoo sites.
Thanks Yahoo, you made my decision easier.
What's even more shocking is that there's people still using Yahoo.
When working on any neophytes or old persons computer Yahoo is there under IE with the default homepage 80% of the time. Reason being is the crapware that OEMs install as well as ISP software both reset the users homepage too it for $$$ cash back.
Ones with MSN as the default page are typically corporate users. If MS decided not to be retarded and capture the market from Google they would put it in the Windows contract to not change the homepage at the OEM level. ... anyway I can see why Yahoo would be threatened by this as smart users like us who go to sites like slashdot use an alternative browser. Or if we do use IE we change the homepage to Google or something similar. Yahoo is the oldschool portal that regular people use who are not into computers very reminiscent of AOL back in the day 10 years earlier.
http://saveie6.com/
Retaliate by getting rid of DNT entirely and then reconfiguring the defaults to be as follows:
Accept First Party Cookies
Block ALL Third Party Cookies
Accept Session Cookies
Delete All Session Cookies on Program Termination
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that MICROSOFT gives more of a shit about the end user than everyone else?
DNT+, Ghostery these are all out there. Frankly there's probably very few websites now that don't track your IP address and other details with multiple
trackers.
Hell go to cnn.com and Ghostery blocks 10 trackers alone. Two of those are )(*@!@)*# Facebook trackers. Frankly, the amount of information people are collecting about our web browsing activities is becoming staggering and I for one won't rely on a company saying they'll honor "Do not Track" options from the browsers.
As Navin Johnson said "It's out there, see a doctor get rid of it" - The Jerk
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The W3C DNT spec explicitly says that a browser should not set this by default, yet Microsoft is completely ignoring the spec and turning it on by default. What Yahoo is doing it 100% correct - it's the only right answer to Microsoft completely ignoring the DNT spec, both in it's intent as well as it's actual words. Every other major web property WILL do the same. Apache already has a patch to ignore DNT from IE10, now Yahoo is doing the same, and the rest will follow.
Users of the SourceForge, Slashdot and Freecode websites have choices regarding the collection and use of information through our websites. This page summarizes some of those choices regarding our use of cookies, some advertising and other tools we use on our websites, and choices that you have about receiving newsletters and other communications from Geeknet. This page is designed to highlight some of the choices you have; for a more detailed discussion, please see Geeknet’s Privacy Statement.
If you feel that DNT should be respected, and you would like to opt-out, please send an email to bitbucket@slashdot.org, devnull@slashdot.org, and trashcan@slashdot.org. Your email will not be read and no action will be taken.
Just because M$ is wrong, does not make Y! correct. Not even fucking close.
Y! would be more correct to just stop supporting M$ browsers at all, and if shit breaks remind the user that they should switch to a supported browser.
.
It's the same way that political polls and statisticians can lie with numbers: you can ask the same question in ways that can "force" or "prompt" a particular answer. (See also episodes of Yes, Prime Minister for examples.
I think it should be illegal to avoid tracking and the evidence suggests the majority of people agree with me on this one.
All major cities have cameras and tracking these days, 99.98% of the population carriers a tracking device on them, and almost nobody uses the software which would reduce the effectiveness of tracking (Tor).
After all it's for your own safety!
I've been using Yahoo for many years and I tried very hard to understand how their company works and why they are always politically biased and publish articles that are very controversial. There are two reasons for this, the first reason that we're all well familiar with is money. They make money for posting controversial articles because they have about 8 advertisements per page, often times videos load immediately when we don't like it (ABP was designed against these kinds of intrusive tactics). The second thing that is least obvious is their ties with the feds. As it turns out, I have spoken to three reputable individuals that were able to confirm various websites that work hand in hand with the federal government, Yahoo being one of them, but more specifically DISQUS. In attempt to monitor potential terrorists, DISQUS as well as many other social networks have cooperated to invalidate people's privacy for a matter of national security.
While I may not agree with their tactic, it is entirely legal, and there's only one thing that can defend us from being spied on from these networks and that's to just not use them. However, nearly all networks will be monitored sometime next year, I believe around May or June and collectively stored in a vary large data center in Utah. However, commenting is not just the only method of which there are privacy concerns but it extends as far as allowing E-Mails to be read by "authorized" authorities, and scanned (I believe only the title) and stored into a "smart" database. In some rare instances, you only need to be logged into facebook and yahoo to be "linked" between accounts when the proper authority uses the correct parser. It's no longer about posting things, but rather just signing in.
I won't tell you guys who told me this, and how many there were, but it's something that is bothersome and will only become worse from now. I don't really care about certain things because I don't do anything illegal, but it's the principle that matters to me. I don't like a "big brother" watching me, because they are civil servants and nothing more. Thank you for reading this.
Okay, I may understand user intent. But easily abused? That is like saying, turning the lights off in my house to save money is abusing use the power company.
I have a question, I wonder how would they react if instead of setting the DNT status to a default state, the browser asked the user at setup or first run what state they want DNT in? Why do I get the feeling that they would say that it's unfair and they still wont honor it.
It makes me feel good inside to know that I am creating revenue for the website that I visit, which helps cover the cost of providing that website. Tracking a user and giving targeting advertising increases the value of the advertising campaigns, which translates into more money for the website.
If we didn't have this, the web is going to become subscription-only very quickly.
Slashdot gives me the option to "Disable Advertising" for having positive Karma, but I choose not to use this.
What is annoying, is that the tracking wouldn't be an issue if the online advertising industry would be more honest to consumers about their practices from be beginning so that it would have been accepted early on, and also not give online advertising a bad name by not tricking websites into displaying ads that the web developer has said not to, and also allowing intrusive or misleading advertising (like how many fake 'Download' buttons do you see on Download sites for example).
Yahoo (and the DNT standard) are pushing for the exact opposite of ignoring users. The Do Not Track standard says the header is to be sent if the user expressly chooses they do not want customizations. It's Microsoft breaking the standard, setting DNT in the absence of any user choice.
That means IE's header does NOT indicate that the user prefers non-customized pages. Indeed with IE the header means nothing and therefore SHOULD be ignored.
If you want us to stop using tracking and ad blockers, you might want to put pressure on companies (like, say, Yahoo) that make us use them.
Sincerely, your user.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Switch ? more technically, I would bet it is a custom HTTP header.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I don't think this company knows what a standard is because they seem to fight them every chance they get. They think they're getting brownie points for being "Pro Consumer", but as always they just end up looking like fools in the end. This is nothing but a PR campaign to prop their lousy browser back into relevance after being embarrassed repeatedly by Chrome.
Does Yahoo honour the Do Not Track of any browser?
If so, which?
Their justification? '[T]he DNT signal from IE10 doesn't express user intent" and "DNT can be easily abused.'"
Well, I guess that sounds better than what will be other advertiser's justification, "because we can".
Relying on corporations to honor the DNT is like relying on intruders to set the evil bit.
If I have to choose between 1 targeted ad, and 10 random ads, I'll take the tracking.
And so we will!?!
You are a good corporate educated sheep. No matter how you spin it and how much Microsoft hate there is still in you it's a good thing this is turned on by default and every browser should turn it on by default and any company ignoring it should be named and shamed. I can't see a single reason why a normal intelligent being would want to be tracked.
- the details and specificity of your browser of choice as indicated by your browser agent,
- your browser settings,
- your screen real estate in pixels,
- your system fonts,
- your browser plug-ins,
- and the content of your HTTP_ACCEPT headers,
- your time-zone,
- and your javascript-abilities. My browser as set gives out 18.43 bits of identifying information as calculated by the EFF at
.
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
.
Click on their Test Me link to see how much information your browser gives away, and how well you could be tracked even if you opt-out of cookies, and tracking, and Flash cookies, and use Ghostery etc. A lot of your identifying information leaks out anyway.
Disable third-party cookies and install the Do Not Track Plus and NoScript extensions. Then to really fuck with the assholes, set up AdBlock Plus and disable its bullshit "non-intrusive advertising" whitelist, and to make sure your point finally sinks in, go into your browser's preferences and enable Do Not Track. In this case, since the Do Not Track header is worse than worthless because it will always will fail miserably to actually do what it claims, the header itself will act as sort of a "fuck off" header instead.
Maybe we need to enhance the "standard" by allowing something like: DNT=FUCK_OFF ...which would be used by people who have their own set of privacy tools. Would this proposed update to the standard pass? After all... dumber things have been approved. Like, say, the DNT standard itself. I would consider a FUCK_OFF flag a massive improvement to such a pathetic standard... at least it would allow you to not only express your desire not to be tracked, but also to tell them what you really think of their joke of a standard.
If my browser featured this, hell... I'd turn it on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
And so it begins... Yahoo has made it official: it won't honor the Do Not Track request issued by Internet Explorer 10.
One company has admitted that it won't honor DNT. Big deal! In the real world, no company will honor DNT.
Since people call the TSA "Security Theater," why haven't they figured out yet that DNT is "Privacy Theater?"
We need a law against idiots pouring good tea into our harbors.
They are now showing the world, what it is like to use a setting, where the obedience of the websites is voluntary. And they have their cross-site-tracking detection feature.
written from firefox with DNT on, noscript and adblockplus with no-tracking blacklist (no ghostery, as its rather dubious and ABP can do the same with the right lists)
Obvious incompetence is not malice. They have plenty of both, but let us not confuse one for the other. They lack the skill to hide this many backdoors so well. Occam's razor demands we attribute these to simple innocence of security best practice established in the 1970's, or inability to understand and implement these principles.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wonder what percentage of users would rather be tracked by default.
According to a 2012 Pew Internet study, 73% of search engine users said they were against tracking by the search engines, and 68% were against targeted advertising.
The corollary is that respecting DNT even for IE 10 matches what over 70%(*) of the users want, while ignoring it only satisfies the wishes of 28%(**) of the users.
(*) I'm starting with the 'targeted ads' numbers which are the more conservative ones. The survey shows 28% of the users want them and 68% oppose them. Furthermore another study shows that, when they have to manually hunt and set DNT, 5 to 6% of the overall population turns it on. Given that we know 68% favor DNT that means 7 to 9% of the users will go through the hassle. So if DNT is on by default on IE 10 we can expect 7 to 9% of the I-want-targeted-ads crowd to turn it back off which translates to 2 to 2.5%. So if DNT is honored for IE 10 these 2 to 2.5% users will get what they want as well as the 68% who are fine with the default setting, yielding a total of 70 to 70.5% users getting what they want.
(**) Or, conversely, going against the wishes of 68% of the users (the remaining 4% don't know what they want).
The apache tracking logs indicated that this SINGLE USER patch was being considered for removal as it wasn't discussed.
Posting as AC makes you a fairly questionable source, as such, I don't feel the need to believe anything you say.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The ones hating MS for this are not the normal people who have genuine gripes against MS.
The ones hating MS for this are the ones who shill for the corporate welfare. They shill for MS when it comes to them being sanctioned over antitrust. This case is one where their reasons for supporting MS (they are a company) is not enough for them to ignore the entitled wish of the advertisers (they are from companies, note the plural).
It's not Yahoo that's at fault here, at least not all by itself. Microsoft chose to implement an "on by default" DNT feature in IE10, which goes against the agreed intention of DNT. Microsoft can fix this in many ways, the simplest of which could be to offer the user a choice upon first using IE10 - heck, they can even have the "activate Do Not Track" option selected by default, so people will only have to click "OK".
Why, do you think, did Microsoft choose not to do this? Do you really think that removing that choice from the first use degrades the user experience so much that it validates ignoring a standard and risking justified behavior from parties like Yahoo? Or could it be that it is Microsoft that would like to see DNT marginalized and sees this as the perfect way of doing so: embrace (done), extend (done), extinguish (in 3.. 2.. 1...)
Thanks for the pointer to that "Yes, Minister" clip. That is exactly the scene I was thinking of! The scary part seems to be that much of politics probably plays out the same way even today. The rest of the episode is amazing, and there's pretty much something to learn (at least for me) in every episode of that series. And something in every episode is "spot on" relevant to politics in SD at the city level, or CA at the state level, or the USA at the national level.
Really, how can you abuse DNT? OMG! That browser allows that person to surface completely anonymously, thats abuse of the DNT system. Users shouldn't be allowed to be completely anonymous. IE10's DNT feature isn't the user's intent? Hmmm I click a button or use a switch that enables Do Not Track. That doesn't mean I don't want to be tracked though. I don't know what i'm doing. I just like hitting buttons. I'm pretty sure there is a whole lot more to it than this but seriously? The way the summary is worded, yahoo is saying we are all idiots and don't know options that we want and not being able to be tracked is a abuse of power.
All Internet corporations that offer stuff "for free" make their money by tracking and recording your preferences and behavior.
Don't believe this ?
Wait and see.
The chick running the show is incompetent. I worked with her
at another company which will not be named here cough
and she really was clueless in many respects. But she did have a nice ass.
TFA doesn't say anything at all about Firefox, but I'm going to block Yahoo at the firewall anyway. Just to be sure. Thanks for the heads-up, Yahoo.
regardless what you think of DNT and DNT with IE10, but thats a choice, the tracking webapp needs to make. When apache filters IE10 DNT-headers, the webapp CANNOT decide to honor them even when its a default. So apache limits the choice of the tracking-software implementors to honor it. Thats filtering on the wrong layer.
Change the user agent string of IE10.
If MS decided not to be retarded and capture the market from Google they would put it in the Windows contract to not change the homepage at the OEM level.
Given that they got slapped with an anti-trust suit for forcing OEMs to ship with IE and not an alternative, they would actually be retarded to try what you suggest.
You'd have to have brain damage to be using any of Yahoo's "services". West-coast AOL.
I'm fine with Yahoo only ignoring IE10 and not any other browsers with DNT turned on. Just gives Windows users another reason not to use IE. Go Yahoo!
Yahoo: We are going to abuase DNT because DNT can be easily abused.
What.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So - IF you don't want to be:
A.) Tracked ...& more?
B.) Spammed
C.) Speed/bandwidth hogged by ads (as well as electricity, CPU cycles, RAM, & other forms of I/O as well)
D.) Hit by malware or malicious scripts (for better "layered-security"/"defense-in-depth")
E.) Hit by DNS poisoning redirection (OR DNS servers being "downed") losing reliability
F.) Blocked out & have even more 'anonymity' (to an extent vs. DNS request logs) + being able to "blow by" what you may feel are unjust blocks (in DNSBL's)...
---
APK Hosts File Engine 5.0++ 32-bit & 64-bit:
http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74
---
Custom hosts files gain me the following benefits (A short summary of where custom hosts files can be extremely useful):
---
1.) Blocking out malware/malscripted sites.
2.) Blocking out Known sites-servers/hosts-domains that are known to serve up malware.
3.) Blocking out Bogus DNS servers malware makers use.
4.) Blocking out Botnet C&C servers.
5.) Blocking out Bogus adbanners that are full of malicious script content.
6.) Blocking out known spammers &/or phishers.
7.) Blocking out TRACKERS.
8.) Getting you back speed/bandwidth you paid for by blocking out adbanners + hardcoding in your favorite sites (faster than remote DNS server resolution).
9.) Added reliability (vs. downed or misdirect/poisoned DNS servers).
10.) Added "anonymity" (to an extent, vs. DNS request logs).
11.) The ability to bypass DNSBL's (DNS block lists you may not agree with).
12.) More screen "real estate" (since no more adbanners appear onscreen eating up CPU, Memory, & other forms of I/O too - bonus!).
13.) Truly UNIVERSAL PROTECTION (since any OS, even on smartphones, usually has a BSD drived IP stack).
14.) Faster & MORE EFFICIENT operation vs. browser plugins (which "layer on" ontop of Ring 3/RPL 3/usermode browsers & are generally written in slower INTERPRETED languages (e.g. AdBlock = python/perl/javascript)- Whereas by way of comparison, the hosts file operates @ the Ring 0/RPL 0/Kernelmode of operation (far faster) as a filter for the IP stack itself which is written in C & Assembly language...).
15.) Custom hosts files work on ANY & ALL webbound apps (browser plugins do not).
16.) Custom hosts files offer a better, faster, more efficient way, & safer way to surf the web & are COMPLETELY controlled by the end-user of them.
---
* There you go... & above all else IF you choose to try it for the enumerated list of benefits I extolled above?
Enjoy the program!
(However, more importantly, enjoy the results in better speed/bandwidth, privacy, reliability, "layered-security"/"defense-in-depth", & even anonymity to an extent (vs. DNS request logs & blowing past DNSBL's) + more, that custom hosts files can yield...)
Of course, THIS is NOT going to "go well" with 3 types of people out there online, profiting by advertising & nefarious exploits + more @ YOUR expense as the consumer:
---
A.) Malware makers & the like (botnet masters, etc./et al)
B.) ADVERTISERS - the TRULY offended ones, as it is their "lifeblood" in psychological attack galore, tracking, & more, etc.!
C.) Webmasters (who profit by ad banners, but fail to realize that those SAME adbanners suck away the users' bandwidth/speed, electricity, CPU cycles, RAM, & other forms of I/O they PAY FOR, plus, adbanners DO get infested with malicious code, & if anyone wants many "examples thereof" from the past near-decade now? Ask!)
---
APK
P.S.=> Lastly - It does a BETTER JOB than AdBlock &/or Ghostery (both of those are OWNED BY ADVERTISERS & are crippled in the former by default, + track you via the latter)
AND
It als
The plan is complete.
1. Society recognizes problem with unregulated market segment
2. Society asks market to please regulate itself
3. Market tries to come up with a solution
4. Market decides, hey, fuck customers and ethics, it's all about the Benjamins suckas!
5. Legal regulation
Having reached step 4, we can now move on to step 5. I am glad about this. Congressional action will merely extend the protections currently enjoyed by Americans to the realm of targeted advertising. Sometimes legal action isn't required. For instance, the movie industry has successfully used their rating system to satisfy the public and stop Congress from getting involved. Sadly, only rare industries do that successfully.
Maybe if I had any reason to use anything developed by Yahoo I'd give two fucks, but alas, I did not wake up from a 10-year-long coma.
did anyone really expected DNT to work?
srsly?
ALL browsers should enable Do Not Track by default!!!
switch IE10 into IE9 compatibility mode.
All the more reason to use it!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Boycott Yahoo!
This new DNT setting is Micosoft saying they don't want OTHER COMPANIES to track their captive Windows 8 users. It's almost impossible to use Windows 8 without a Bing/Live/Whatever-they-call-it-now signon. You can install Win8 and use a local account, but the don't-call-it-Metro apps (sports, weather, etc) don't work. Only a sophisticated user would bypass the Bing setup step (or even notice it could be bypassed) during first boot in the first place.
I can't believe the media is not all over this story - Microsoft is releasing Win8 to monetize their captive audience. They track you when you use their apps. They don't want others to monetize the same users.
I agree; why didn't the Anonymous above provide some sort of backstory explaining why they chose to post anon? (Although, Ash, why feel the need to believe anyone? Shouldn't belief be your choice?)
(For example, I post Anon since everyone at my office likes to read /. and I'd rather not get into that can of worms as myself.)
" their mail is unusable on my system "
You Are Doing It Wrong.
I read my accumulation of Yahoo and Gmail and other accounts using Thunderbird (on Linux) and Thunderbird Portable (on Windows, I copy it from my USB key, use it, then cut/paste it back for speed or leave the program folder on permanent installs. Can't beat the ease of backup!)
I don't see Yahoo or Google mail pages or deal with their annoying layour, let alone their adverts. Doing so would not serve me.
Fuck 'em with George Carlin's proverbial Big Rubber Dick. :-)
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
a whole bunch of RFC's, and mails to their abuse account.
What else is new?
The standard is stupid; in fact, it's so stupid that it makes less sense when used in a fable. So...
Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.
One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.
The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.
The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.
Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.
Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.
The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to forbid what Farmer Bill did, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.
Some Sheep as well as the other three farmers, start to hate what
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
has had it's meaning stretched against all meaning before. Could we stretch it a little more to prosecute companies who ignore the DNT flag?
Up until now, the Internet has basically been run by the people who have the websites. If you visit their website, you are going to get anything they want to give you. If they wanted to be fussy, they might have a TOS that says something like "by visiting this website, you agree to allow us to track you".
There has never been a way for the consumer of the information to tell the website what they were authorized to transmit to the consumers machine. Now there is, Do Not Track. It can interpreted to mean the website is authorized to do anything it wants except, track the user. If the website tracks the user, after receiving a DNT flag, they have accessed the Consumer's PC beyond their authorization.
Each individual violation is very small damages, but in aggregate, when they ignore the flag on millions of visits, it could potentially be big fines/damages. Perfect territory for a Class Action Lawsuit or an adventurous DA trying to make a name for himself. They even open themselves up for this type of lawsuit by publicly announcing they will ignore the flag.
This is a battle for power. The consumer is trying to grab a little power and privacy back from the websites with DNT. The major advertisers are freaking out about even this minor shift in the balance of power.
Companies don't need to put tracking bits on our computers, they can pool information and mine everything which they'll do if it's the only way forward for them.
Don't trust a "legislative" solution to a technical problem. DNT is a polite suggestion, nothing more; implementation is on-your-honor (or dishonor, in this case). Is anyone *that* surprised about stories like this?
Now begin (or should) the technical countermeasures. Suggestions to MS for IE 10.01: If *.yahoo.com in domain:
* Expiry for all cookies and cache resources from this domain set to 7 days or the end of a session (browser exited), whichever comes first. "Cache resources" includes without limitation caches maintaned by plugins (e.g. Flash persistent storage).
* Cookie and cookie-equivalent data retrieval sandboxed by clickstream. E.g. hit yahoo.com - sets cookie. Click to yahoo.com/link - cookie readable (same clickstream scope). User opens a new window and manually browses to yahoo.com - cookies set in first window's session unreadable (out of scope) to 2nd window's session. This behavior may have to extend to cache objects (see "evercookie" and friends)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
The point of DNT is not itself to stop tracking, but to give the user a voice about their preference. The difference is a bit subtle, but you can understand it in less than 30 seconds if you try.
Before DNT, you did not have a way to say whether you preferred that companies not track you or you preferred that they track you and give you delightfully relevant targeted advertising. Now you have a way to express this to the sites you visit. DNT is your choice voice.
Giving your preferences a voice is valuable.
It doesn't mean that the sites who get the message are going to obey it. It's an expression of your preference, not a magical spell to cause them to act a certain way. However, when this protocol for expressing choice becomes adequately standardized, when we know that DNT expresses the actual user's desires (rather than is automatically set), we can then enact laws to coerce businesses into complying with users' desires.
Hmm... but if I'm sort of serious about looking for something to buy on Craigslist, Yahoo Tubes makes it possible, moreso than writing a bunch of scripts that filter down wget output, for example... I might actually spend some time trying to filter down Google search results on technical stuff, since Google decided they needed to go away from exact-word/exact-phrase matching (rather than simply obfuscating it away).
I believe the issue with Apache (and I suspect any other web server software service) is that to honor the "Do Not Track" would break its architecture. To do its own internal work Apache must TRACK the request as it handles the request.
The real issue is that DNT requires a "trust" when there is no mechanism for trust. On the web client side there is no mechanism to make sure the server honors the request. On the server side there is no reason why it would honor a remote setting over its own configuration. We might as well implement the GOOD setting in HTTP as well so servers know that when GOOD is enabled that information is not allowed to be stolen.
When advertising started on the Internet the complaint was that the adverts were irrelevant and needed to be targeted. Which means tracking.
I am the king of a country, you should listen to me!
...to figure out how to change to a better browser, they're probably too stupid to notice they're being tracked
while
that is how long it takes to turn from tracked to "BITCH"
if you like being the "BITCH" then go ahead install it use it. Agree to the EULA which also asks for your next two grandchildren to be sacrificed to Cthulu.
The idea that because you "HAVE" a phone number I can robo-dial you is the same concept as if you "HAVE" an email address I can spam you and the same concept as if you "HAVE" my browser I can record all your internet activity and then sell it to make money without paying you any.
I don't remember providing you may intent on being tracked in the first place. I don't see any warning banners of you tracking me when I surf the internet, why do you not provide an opt-out solution for me in the first place.
Sheesh, does Yahoo or any other site that tracks not remember they implemented tracking without first determining user's intended desires for such?
Per my subject-line - You/re MORE THAN WELCOME to attempt to disprove ANY of its points I stated here -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3212703&cid=41789205
* Best part is, I KNOW YOU CAN'T (and you know it too)...
(All you've got is an effete downmod that has NO SUBSTANCE behind it @ all, period)
APK
P.S.=> “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.” - Sun Tzu (in “The Art of War”) ...
... apk
You're questionable after this ad boy http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3212703&cid=41795823
The rest of the world will ignore Yahoo.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Fuck right off, you boring great tool.
Awww, poo' lil' wuss having a tantrum, but unable to disprove my points here -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3212703&cid=41795545
"Fuck right off, you boring great tool." - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 28, @11:12AM (#41796495)
OOOooo, sounds "kinky" little troll, but... alas, sorry - you FAIL (and, you KNOW it, see my subject-line above!)
* :)
LMAO!!!
Yes, the result's ALWAYS THE SAME, lol...
---
1.) Effete tantrums
2.) Bogus unjustifiable downmods (seems you ran dry on those, lol)
3.) Illogical off-topic failing ad hominem attack attempts
4.) "FoAmiNg-@-the-MouTh" profanity-riddled rants now, too?
---
( Please... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> Getting a "ReAcTiOn" like that, instead of YOU disproving my points, you effete little troll? Priceless... &, of course, lastly??
Well... you KNOW I've just GOTTA say it, as-is-per-my-usual "inimitable style":
THIS? This was just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'"... lol, & it ALWAYS IS, vs. puny trolls like you!
... apk
Someone please mod Yahoo +5 for ironic as fuck. Tracking internet users has no potential for abuse at all right Yahoo? Microsoft and IE are obviously trying to cut into your market share by deploying rogue technology against you.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Yahoo! may be the first big website destination to announce this, but they will be far from the last.
First of all... Yahoo has very granular (and publicly available settings) which you can use to control the amount of tracking they do.
Secondly... tracking definitely does improve the quality of the ads Yahoo! (and other sites) present. That's well known. What people seem to forget, though, is that it also affects the quality of the content you see. The more you use the service, the more it learns what you do and don't like to see, and the higher quality the content is shown. If a default "on" was accepted, then all of a sudden everybody who logged into Yahoo! after upgrading to Windows 8 would have a markedly degraded experience, and it's a fairly safe bet that outside of our little ultra-techie circle there, that it would raise a ruckus.
Slashdot is a biased sample. The majority of Internet users would be much more upset about losing the quality of service than losing the DNT option in IE10. And if people didn't like the content, then there wouldn't still be 650 million unique visitors each month.
What this all boils down to is that you can't have your cake and eat it too.
The DNT standard was based on good faith of all parts, and it's better than the previous situation in which you had to use drastic measures to opt out of tracking. If browsers turn the flag on by default, websites will just ignore it and you will be right back where you started.
Do you really think all this bullshit would be going on if Mozilla had a wizard setting for DNT ? Will Yahoo, and the other bullshitters who are all of a sudden so concerned with user intent, ignore every default setting in every application ????? Pure unadulterated bullshit. Boycott Yahoo, boycott adobe, boycott apache - they are all fucking liars with an agenda. These scumbags are as bad as journalists.
Is that the mating call of a defeated troll or what? Hahahaha
OMG, despite the fact that I knew about all this in theory I really had to see the difference with firefox + torbutton in non-tor mode vs. tor-mode, let alone tor-mode with noscript blocking scripts - the difference was staggering.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
See subject-line & disprove facts I listed here -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3212703&cid=41795545
(You CAN'T, & you know it, I KNOW IT, & anyone reading with 1/2 a brain does also, since ALL YOU HAVE, is an unjustifiable downmod... nothing more!)
* :)
LMAO!!!
Yes, the result's ALWAYS THE SAME, lol...
---
1.) Effete tantrums
2.) Bogus unjustifiable downmods
3.) Illogical off-topic failing ad hominem attack attempts
4.) "FoAmiNg-@-the-MouTh" profanity-riddled rants now, too?
---
( Please... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> Getting a "ReAcTiOn" like that, in an "effete retaliation" in a totally UNJUSTIFIABLE DOWNMOD of my post, instead of YOU disproving my points, you effete little troll? Priceless... &, of course, lastly??
Well... you KNOW I've just GOTTA say it, as-is-per-my-usual "inimitable style":
THIS? This was just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'"... lol, & it ALWAYS IS, vs. puny trolls like you!
... apk
AdBlock only operates on Mozilla products, it's written in slower javascript/perl/python, & operates in SLOWER ring 3/rpl 3/usermode, LAYERED OVER ALREADY SLOWER ring 3/rpl 3/usermode apps in browsers (vs. custom hosts operating in ring 0/rpl 0/kernelmode, merely acting as a filter for the IP stack which is written in C & Assembly language - FAR faster!). AdBlock also can't speedup your favorite sites and protect you vs. DNS poisoning (as well as making access to your fav. sites more reliable), and more where it's inferior to custom hosts files...
So - IF you don't want to be:
A.) Tracked ...& more?
B.) Spammed
C.) Speed/bandwidth hogged by ads (as well as electricity, CPU cycles, RAM, & other forms of I/O as well)
D.) Hit by malware or malicious scripts (for better "layered-security"/"defense-in-depth")
E.) Hit by DNS poisoning redirection (OR DNS servers being "downed") losing reliability
F.) Blocked out & have even more 'anonymity' (to an extent vs. DNS request logs) + being able to "blow by" what you may feel are unjust blocks (in DNSBL's)...
---
APK Hosts File Engine 5.0++ 32-bit & 64-bit:
http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74
---
Custom hosts files gain me the following benefits (A short summary of where custom hosts files can be extremely useful):
---
1.) Blocking out malware/malscripted sites.
2.) Blocking out Known sites-servers/hosts-domains that are known to serve up malware.
3.) Blocking out Bogus DNS servers malware makers use.
4.) Blocking out Botnet C&C servers.
5.) Blocking out Bogus adbanners that are full of malicious script content.
6.) Blocking out known spammers &/or phishers.
7.) Blocking out TRACKERS.
8.) Getting you back speed/bandwidth you paid for by blocking out adbanners + hardcoding in your favorite sites (faster than remote DNS server resolution).
9.) Added reliability (vs. downed or misdirect/poisoned DNS servers).
10.) Added "anonymity" (to an extent, vs. DNS request logs).
11.) The ability to bypass DNSBL's (DNS block lists you may not agree with).
12.) More screen "real estate" (since no more adbanners appear onscreen eating up CPU, Memory, & other forms of I/O too - bonus!).
13.) Truly UNIVERSAL PROTECTION (since any OS, even on smartphones, usually has a BSD drived IP stack).
14.) Faster & MORE EFFICIENT operation vs. browser plugins (which "layer on" ontop of Ring 3/RPL 3/usermode browsers & are generally written in slower INTERPRETED languages (e.g. AdBlock = python/perl/javascript)- Whereas by way of comparison, the hosts file operates @ the Ring 0/RPL 0/Kernelmode of operation (far faster) as a filter for the IP stack itself which is written in C & Assembly language...).
15.) Custom hosts files work on ANY & ALL webbound apps (browser plugins do not).
16.) Custom hosts files offer a better, faster, more efficient way, & safer way to surf the web & are COMPLETELY controlled by the end-user of them.
---
* There you go... & above all else IF you choose to try it for the enumerated list of benefits I extolled above?
Enjoy the program!
(However, more importantly, enjoy the results in better speed/bandwidth, privacy, reliability, "layered-security"/"defense-in-depth", & even anonymity to an extent (vs. DNS request logs & blowing past DNSBL's) + more, that custom hosts files can yield...)
Of course, THIS is NOT going to "go well" with 3 types of people out there online, profiting by advertising & nefarious exploits + more @ YOUR expense as the consumer:
---
A.) Malware makers & the like (botnet masters, etc./et al)
B.) ADVERTISERS - the TRULY offended ones, as it is their "lifeblood" in psychological attack galore, tracking, & more, etc.!
C.) Webmaster
1.) Adblock's written in SLOWER interpreted code (javascript/python/perl) - hosts files operate merely as a filter for the IP Stack itself, which was written in far, Far, FAR FASTER C & Assembly language code (& has been optimized for over 40++ yrs. since 1970 too)...
2.) AdBlock &/or Ghostery CANNOT speed-up your favorite sites as custom hosts files do (via "hardcodes" of your favorite sites into them as line records).
3.) AdBlock &/or Ghostery are OWNED BY ADVERTISERS - you can't trust them...
4.) AdBlock &/or Ghostery only operate on browsers (and not ALL of them either afaik) - hosts do, and on ANY "WebBound" app...
5.) AdBlock + Ghostery aren't "multiplatform" as in smartphones for example - hosts files, are!
... for STARTERS...
---
(Want MORE?)
* See subject-line above... you FAIL!
APK
P.S.=> When will these PUNY trolls ever learn, that when they *try* to "take me on", it's like a single ANT attacking a MASTODON!
... apk