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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.
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
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/
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.
They do 100% the opposite of what the draft "standard" says...
http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/drafts/tracking-dnt.html#determining
"A user agent must have a default tracking preference of unset (not enabled) unless a specific tracking preference is implied by the decision to use that agent. For example, use of a general-purpose browser would not imply a tracking preference when invoked normally as "SuperFred", but might imply a preference if invoked as 'SuperDoNotTrack' or 'UltraPrivacyFred'."
IE 10 does not imply a tracking preference.
To be fair this was changed recently, but on the other hand Microsoft has had plenty of time to change the default setting. The could have the browser start the first time on a page that let's the user change the setting and be complaint.
They should have made a huge startup dialog "Do you want to be tracked"
Have you actually seen the startup dialog?
It's not that DNT is on by default; as is made clear, choosing the Express settings will turn it on.
The browser out of the box does not have DNT set in either state.
That is a VERY recent change to the standard which was put in AFTER MS gave users an option which was well within the standard. Advertisers realised they would be fucked so they changed the standard.
Verizon must operate in a non civilised world then. Verizon proactively collects and sells your information unless you log into their portal and turn off the service - providing you can find it. And Verizon isn't the only one - they all do it. Why would any company turn down such as easy way to make money that requires virtually no effort on their part.
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).
And now Yahoo doesn't either as they can't tell if the user made an active choice in setting the DNT or not. Hell I could set my user agent string, scripts, return data e.t.c. to simulate IE10 and still be tracked with DNT on. Just go to show how utter useless DNT really is without a legal framework.
I don't think anybody really cares whether the do-not-track option is set or not. It sure as hell does not seem to matter to Facebook. The other day I kept being bothered by an nag screen due to an invalid Facebook SSL certificate. Setting the do-not-track check-box in my browser had no effect, it wasn't until I installed a dedicated Facebook blocker that the damn thing went away. If you want anonymous browsing don't rely on do-not-track options, either get yourself some sort of a general purpose anti tracking addon for your browser or download a browser specially designed for anonymous browsing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow