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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.

11 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 Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Funny

      What's even more shocking is that there's people still using Yahoo.

    2. 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.

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

      proactively tagged and tracked by their ISP and cell phone carrier who sell their information to the highest bidder.

      In the civilised world this is illegal and the mobile networks are legally required to provide proper privacy. In fact, employees occasionally go to jail for breaching telecom privacy rules. It does happen in some countries but that is an exception. There are plenty of us who would spend money to have that kind of privacy guarantee extended to internet connections.

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    4. Re:Shocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Shocking by TrueSpeed · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    6. 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();
    7. Re:Shocking by sjames · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They followed it just fine. They allow the user to choose the common default configuration and CORRECTLY guessed that most commonly, people don't want to be tracked like an animal.

      If the user would like to be tracked, they may choose that as well. It's not like allowing tracking requires a registry hack.

    8. Re:Shocking by You're+All+Wrong · · Score: 5, Interesting

      False - they followed the standard. Then somebody on the standards committee (Fielding, presumably) *changed* the standard.

      Look at the date stamps on the released versions of the W3C standards - look at the minutes of the meetings of the committee. If you have more than half a brain you will notice that the change between the most recent version and the previous version of the standard - which *did not* have the default clause you seem to think has been there for ever - was not discussed in any meeting.

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

      --
      Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
    9. 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. Why not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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