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Yahoo Will Ignore IE 10's "Do Not Track"

Posted by timothy on from the tsa-logic dept.

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.

7 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Shocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Shocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, not at all. The real shock is anyone thinking that Microsoft isn't the one to blame here.

      They didn't follow the standard, again, and so they knew the switch in IE would be ignored.

    2. Re:Shocking by captain_sweatpants · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You seem to have neglected to read this bit, so I'll repeat it for you

      They didn't follow the standard, again

      Anyway it's a pointless standard so the argument is moot. A voluntary standard that gets in the way of profits is a standard that will never be followed.

    3. Re:Shocking by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Verizon must operate in a non civilised world then.

      Correct.

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    4. Re:Shocking by You're+All+Wrong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > The WC3 is being influenced by shills. I'd put money on there being some Yahoo! input on the W3C committee.

      Oh Jesus, it's worse than I thought. Head over to
      http://www.w3.org/2012/dnt-ws/

      Right on the front page - a hiuge great banner:
      """
      Workshop Sponsor

      sponsored by Yahoo!

      Contact W3C if you are interested in Sponsorship
      """

      Corrupt as fuck.

      --
      Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
  2. Re:Why not? by Xest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If giving users privacy by default is ignoring the spec then the spec is already meaningless.

    As such I and no doubt many others will continue to use ad-blockers and roll out ad-blockers to friends, family, and the businesses we work for to ensure that if they're going to track us regardless of our DNT setting, then they wont get any ad-revenue at all.

    So here's the thing, if I go into IE's options and disable DNT, and then re-enable it giving express consent according to the DNT spec then tell me, why is my DNT option still going to be ignored by Apache, Yahoo etc. hmm? Who is breaking the spec to make money and suit themselves then?

  3. Re:*I* Rather be tracked by default by Xest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, because before ads and subscription only became the norm there was nothing on the internet whatsoever, no content at all, nope, none whatsoever. Even sites like Wikipedia don't actually exist and we all just imagined them because they don't have ads or tracking so they can't possibly be real.

    For what it's worth the quality of content has gone down with the increase in ad-revenue run sites. You only have to look at Slashdot for example - nowadays due to being so reliant on gathering ad-revenue they regularly post stories that are out and out flamebait and not correct, informative, or interesting whatsoever purely to gain ad-revenue. Ad run websites have merely created a race to the bottom- to provide as much untrue inciteful bollocks as possible to make people come and see what the fuss is all about to increase ad revenue.