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5 Years Later, 'Do Not Track' System Ineffective
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from ComputerWorld:
"In 2009, a few Internet privacy advocates developed an idea that was supposed to give people a way to tell websites they don't want to be monitored as they move from website to website. The mechanism, which would eventually be built into all the major browsers, was called Do Not Track. ... But today, DNT hangs by a thread, neutered by a failure among stakeholders to reach agreement. Yes, if you turn it on in your browser, it sends a signal in the form of an HTTP header to Web companies' servers. But it probably won't change what data they collect. That's because most websites either don't honor DNT — it's currently a voluntary system — or they interpret it in different ways. Another problem — perhaps the biggest — is that Web companies, ad agencies and the other stakeholders have never reached agreement on what "do not track" really means."
You can't trust ad agencies even if it was spelled out in law. There are always parties who just don't care about anything but making money.
If you want to not be tracked use some anonymizing technologies.
"Cookie tracking means you're getting spammed with ads you DO want, instead of the ads you don't want."
Don't care. I don't see any ads, 'wanted' or not.
Adblock+Ghostery+a Refererblocker works for me.
Another problem â" perhaps the biggest â" is that Web companies, ad agencies and the other stakeholders have never reached agreement on what "do not track" really means.
"Do not track" is dead because the meaning is so obvious that they couldn't find a way to gut its meaning while pretending to give it lip service.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Do not track"?
Everyone wants everything for free, and so there is advertising.
The entire idea of "do not track" was ludicrous.
Everyone wants their free lunches with no strings attached, but there will always be strings.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Right now, most geeks think of advertising as bad things, because they hate the ads served to them as geeks are a horrible audience demographic. They don't know, that in the real world, people actually WANT advertising. That's why people buy things like newspapers and magazines, BECAUSE of the ads.
No -- that's certainly not why people buy newspapers, except for those people who just want the coupon section (which is generally segregated from the rest of the paper). Who the heck buys a newspaper just for the ads?
As for magazines, there are some which clearly seem to be able the ads -- particularly style magazines and such. Mostly it's something to allow people to drool over clothes and other luxury fashion items they can't afford (or could barely afford). But yeah -- SOME magazines seem to be bought for the ads.
Many others, however, like ones focused on news or politics or science or literature or whatever, are definitely not about the ads. At best, they're a minor annoyance that readers put up with -- very few people buy a copy of Scientific American or The New Yorker for the ads. In some cases, like trade magazines or foodie magazines, the ads can be targeted better, so I can see how some people want that.
In any case, the point is that "in the real world" people do NOT want advertising incessantly. How many people prefer to watch TV with advertisements thrown in (other than as a break to go to the bathroom or get a sandwich)? If everybody did, there would be little reason for technology that allows you to record and fast forward through the commercials.
People are often happy to receive ads on their terms and when they want to receive them. They know what they're getting if they buy a newspaper for the coupon section or if they buy a magazine 90% full of photos of expensive designer clothing ads.
But "real everyday people" are just as annoyed by pop-up ads or random ad interjections getting in their way of accomplishing tasks as anyone else is. And, let's face it, that's what MOST of the advertising on the web is. If I want to buy something on the web, I go to a freakin' merchant site and browse for things. It's not like I have to go out and buy a magazine to show me ads for designer clothes, when I can just go to the websites of the companies that sell this stuff and see the stuff directly!
In sum -- yeah, sometimes people buy things that have ads when they want to see ads. But on the internet, people often just want to get tasks done too -- whether it's sending email via webmail or interacting on Facebook or whatever. I have NEVER EVER in my life heard a person say, "Gee -- I really love how Facebook keeps adding more ads to my newsfeed" or "I really wish that my webmail would have more pop-ups to get in my way when I'm trying to read a message."
Swap Ghostery for Disconnect. The dev behind Ghostery sells metrics data to advertisers which helps them target their advertising. http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to-advertisers-2013-6
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
"Do Not Call" is enforced by law, you can sue for violations. You can't sue over violations of "Do Not Track" and so it is useless.
Not a sentence!
Your post advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting tracking. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Trackers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop trackers for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from trackers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Trackeres don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of tracking
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with trackers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of trackers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Who the heck buys a newspaper just for the ads?
You must be a youngun'. Back in the pre-web days there were magazines that were pretty much 100% ads. "Computer Shopper" was one. "Nuts & Volts" was 90% ads. The best part of PC Magazine was the page of tombstone ads at the very back of the magazine, often for some weird product from a garage start-up. I have bought many, many newspapers/magazines "just for the ads".
No. Just, no.
Go back to class and learn how HTTP works. The user (and his "agent", the designated software making requests on his behalf) are fully in control of the experience. The website presents content on an open interface, and the user, via his agent, requests it as he sees fit. If he requests the text of the page, but not the images, that's his prerogative, not the site owner's. If he requests only certain images, follows only certain links, and doesn't do certain DOM manipulations via scripting, that also is the viewer's prerogative. The site owner has fuck-all to say about it.
That's why site owners cannot win against AdBlock. HTTP was built for exactly the situation that AdBlock enforces. It's just that most site owners got used to lazy, unconfigurable user agents that didn't do what their users actually wanted. Now that some users are daring to go against that "standard", site owners are showing their true colors by becoming a bunch of whiny asshats.
This has nothing to do with geeks, either. AdBlock is becoming my go-to tool for people that complain their "internet is slow". And once they get a glimpse of the web without ads, it's game over. Nobody wants advertising. People tolerate advertising as long as what they get in return is worth putting up with some no-skill ass-clown shouting about the product he's been hired to shill for. But advertising companies long ago stepped across that line. I have no moral qualms about wiping out advertising completely. I'm willing to do it and put up with whatever consequences there are. Advertisers are wise to not push me or those that think similarly.