Slashdot Mirror
Google and Apple Weaseling Out of "Do Not Track"
An anonymous reader writes "Per an op-ed in today's New York Times, Google, Apple, and others would be effectively exempt from "Do not track": "[T]he rules would allow the largest Internet giants to continue scooping up data about users on their own sites and on other sites that include their plug-ins, such as Facebook's 'Like' button or an embedded YouTube video. This giant loophole would make 'Do Not Track' meaningless."
Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel...
What is needed is some way to poison the information sent to them. And of course, that more people block ads. And that people stop being so lazy and don't give a shit. I think the last one is the largest problem. Maybe a leak of millions of people's private email would be good.
"A study commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau with researchers from Harvard Business School underscores the point: at least half of the Internet’s economic value is based on the collection of individual user data, and nearly all commercial content on the Internet relies on advertising to some extent. Digital advertising grew to a $42.8 billion business last year, a sum that already exceeds spending on broadcast television advertising."
One way or another, you pay for your free Internet services.
Firstly because of the hysterical tone, secondly because it's an op-ed, and thirdly because it's on Slashdot.
Can someone who knows what's going on analyze this and give a reasonable non-hysterical interpretation? I don't necessarily /trust/ the companies mentioned, but again the submission stinks.
This matters because if two of the biggest tracking companies have openly decided that they will not listen to users who ask not to be tracked, then there is no longer any wiggle-room left where they can claim any moral arguments in this war, even to the layperson. They have effectively just doubled-down and escalated the arms race between them and ad blockers/anonymizing services by not even making a token empty promise to honor their user's desires.
You are obviously clueless. The issue is cross-domain tracking, as in where someone uses one of the FB, Goog, or other 'widgets' or advertising integrations on their own site...
Don't go to sites that use FB widgets. Use Ghostery or a number of other tools. If you are being tracked, it's because you *allow* it.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Do not do anything that you don't want to see on the front page of the New York Times", has included "or Google searches" for quite some time.
Assume there are no secrets on the Internet; any other expectation is unrealistically optimistic.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Do Not Track" never meant anything at all. It's the equivalent of a "Please be nice to me" button.
We need technical solutions to make fingerprinting harder/impossible. Especially the canvas/font techniques.
meep
Is there any excuse beyond "Apple is better link bait than Facebook"?
What are you talking about? Apple's business model revolves around selling people hardware. They've just launched a digital payment scheme with privacy being a major differentiator. If you think that Apple's business model is "100% predicated on tracking people", you don't know the first thing about their business model.
Apple are positioning themselves to use privacy as a selling point. Their business model is entirely different to Google's and they can make more money by going in the opposite direction.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
If you are being tracked, it's because you *allow* it.
Wrong.
It is because you don't prevent it. At least legally, that is a very big difference. If I allow you to hit me in the face, e.g. by participating in a boxing match, then I can't later sue you for bodily harm. If you do it without my permission and I just fail to prevent it, then all the guilt falls on you anyway and I can sue you, plus you have committed a crime. That's quite a big difference there between those two words.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org