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W3C Rejects Ad Industry's Do-Not-Track Proposal

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-come-'round-here-with-that-nonsense dept.

itwbennett writes "The W3C's Tracking Protection Working Group, which is mainly concerned with standardizing the mechanisms for server-side compliance with do-not-track requests, has rejected a proposal by from the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) that would have allowed advertisers to continue profiling users who had asked not to be tracked. The proposal would also have allowed them to 'retarget' ads to those users by showing ads relevant to one site or transaction on all subsequent sites they visited, according to the co-chairs of the W3C's Tracking Protection Working Group. The working group co-chairs also said that they planned to reject proposals similar to those made by the DAA."

3 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Do Not Track... by Synerg1y · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The most useless checkbox in the history of browsers.

  2. Not useless, but its usefulness is now over by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DNT had exactly one use: to determine whether or not advertisers respect the wishes of people who do not want their browsing habits tracked. The verdict is in, and to nobody's surprise advertisers have no respect for anyone. Now we know that we are justified in using ad-blocking plugins and building browsers that block ads by default.

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    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:Not useless, but its usefulness is now over by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are acting like tracking and advertising are inseparable. They are not, you can advertise without tracking people and you can make money doing so. I do not want to be tracked, and the only technical solution at this point is to block advertisements -- because even loading a static image from an advertiser will be used as a data point to track me.

      If a website wants me to view its ads, it should refuse the business of advertisers that create privacy-invading ads. If websites were standing up for their users they would not be at risk of becoming collateral damage in this fight.

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      Palm trees and 8