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Firefox Advances Do-Not-Track Technology
CowboyRobot writes "Despite strong advertising industry opposition, Mozilla is advancing plans to have the Firefox browser block, by default, many types of tracking used by numerous websites, and especially advertisers. 'We're trying to change the dynamic so that trackers behave better,' Brendan Eich, CTO of Firefox developer Mozilla, told The Washington Post. According to NetMarketShare, 21% of the world's computers run Firefox. Eich said the blocking technology, which is still being refined, will go live in the next few months. The blocking technology is based on that used by Apple's Safari browser, which blocks all third-party cookies. Advertisers use these types of cookies to track users across multiple websites. Mozilla's cookie-blocking efforts follow a Do Not Track capability being adopted by all major browsers. But the DNT effort stalled in November 2012, after advertisers stopped participating in the program, following Microsoft making DNT active by default in Internet Explorer 10. Advertisers wanted the feature to be not active by default."
I can update my 'do not track' tech even further. It's called Tor, and the more people who use it, the safer it becomes. Bonus: Comes with free tin foil hat, extended digital middle finger to pervasive electronic surveillance.
Captcha: Doesn't work on Slashdot, which hates Tor and has banned all the exit nodes. "Slashdot is a Dice Holdings, Inc. service." *cough*
But seriously; if they can't link you to an IP address (which let's face it: with all the DNT in the world, your IP is logged by your ISP and your ISP is only too happy to whore out your realworld identity for a few scheckles, and it's trivial to link all your activity now to you, whether you login or not, use cookies, or all the browser magic in the world.
The only tech that can help you right now is one that mixes in all your traffic into everyone else's so you can't mine the data.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
In Canada at least, Tor is awful. Because others can use your connection as well, if someone looks at child porn from behind your connection, you are guilty of distribution.
I suppose if you're dumb enough to disregard the gratuitous warnings on the download page, the application itself, the configuration file, the manual, and every internet site that offers a 'how to', all of which lay out in explicit detail what an exit node is, and why enabling one on your personal home internet connection is very bad, then you deserve a punch in the face. But you won't go to jail over it. Not even in Canada... no more than running an open wifi will. And yes, that's been to court. And yes, the guy shit bricks. But he was found guilty only of criminal stupidity.
The correct way to configure Tor in a way that helps everyone and avoids this problem is to set it up as a relay, thus any traffic that comes and goes through your system is encrypted, there is no way for you (or anyone else) to tell what its contents are, and stays within the Tor network.
But by all means, we should all just give in to having our privacy violated by corporations, governments, and anyone with slightly more technical finesse than this Anonymous Coward does... all because a very tiny fraction of the population wants to look at child porn/terrorist websites/whatever is politically unpopular this week.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Don't you mean browser.privatebrowsing.allowNSASpying=false?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It was MS giving me what I want, and the Apache Software Foundation siding with the advertisers against me. Don't try to spin it into something different.
No. It was Microsoft making your decision for you, making it entirely justifiable for advertisers to ignore the preference entirely since it doesn't represent your preference. And more likely it had squat to do with them championing privacy and more to do with screwing over Google and other advertisers.
I'm sure a browser could pose the question with some information the first time the browser is launched to make the preference an explicit user choice.
Indeed, considering the various sociopathic methods that advertisers are willing to enact to get their message heard, regardless of whether the end user wants to hear it, I say fuck them. The DNT wouldn't be necessary if they were satisfied with an opt in set up or we had any idea as to who the people doing the tracking were. But, that isn't the case.
They've given us malware in ad banners that use code hosted on 3rd party sites, those annoying flash ads that cover content and randomly crash, the intellitext that randomly disrupts our browsing and not to mention those hidden ads that get activated when you click on seemingly blank space on a site.
I'd personally suggest that they made their bed, and now it's time for them to lie in it. But, I think they might take that as permission to lie to me if they're actually in bed.
Which is as it should be.
The website owners and advertises screwed things up for themselves by setting up a system that made it virtually impossible for people browsing the web to opt out. So, measures like this became necessary. At this point, you have to go to extremes if you don't want to be tracked, and there is no informed consent for most people, you have to be constantly following their methods if you wish to opt out. And do things like blocking 3rd party cookies, javascript, flash, constantly clearing your cache etc.
I'd rather that Mozilla not need to do this, but it's abundantly clear that the advertising industry will not stop of its own accord. We people that browse the web didn't start this war, the advertisers did, and until we get a consistent way of opting into all this tracking, this kind of method is going to be necessary.