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."

Comments

Weasle

[Cowclops]

Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel...

There's no such thing as a free lunch

[twitnutttt]

"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.

I automatically disbelieved this post

[Pope Hagbard]

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.

Re:I automatically disbelieved this post

[Anonymous Coward]

For one thing, "Do Not Track" has never meant the same thing to the Big Data companies as it has to the layman. In practice Do Not Track really means "do not remind me you are tracking me by showing me obvious clues like ads for shit I already bought last week." But they still track people and build up profiles that they sell/rent to other companies who use it more subtley like estimating your income, race, age, politics, family relations, arrest records, etc and that all goes into thinks like background/credit reports etc. Plus they also wait for the second you accidentally do give them permission and then all those years worth of tracking data in a "ghost profile" gets officially attached to your profile and they start showing you ads for shit you already own.

Re:I automatically disbelieved this post

[PopeRatzo]

Of course, I have my own opinions but I won't share them because they reflect my own biases.

That may be the single stupidest sentence in the history of stupid sentences on the Internet.

You won't share what you think because it's what you think. Everything you see and think and say and do reflects your own biases. If you decide not to share a single bit of data that is floating around in your head if it happens to reflect your biases, that means you will spend the rest of your life mute, which come to think of it might be best for everyone.

I've just re-read your entire comment and it doesn't seem to say anything at all about anything. Are you a Markov bot? If so, your maker forgot to put in the AI.

Re:Not new

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Of Course

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mean to sound glib but, of course they are!

Both company's entire business models are 100% predicated on tracking people. Facebook has a $200B market valuation based on nothing but tracking the ever-living-shit out of as many people as they possibly can. Two hundred billion fucking dollars! There is simply no way these companies will ever agree to not track anyone when there is that kind of money on the line. For that kind of money they will murder people before they give up tracking. That is "invade a foreign country" levels of money on the line. All those people who thought GM conspired to kill the electric car 20 years ago, this is easily 10x more than that.

Re:Of Course

[Bogtha]

Both company's entire business models are 100% predicated on tracking people.

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.

There is simply no way these companies will ever agree to not track anyone when there is that kind of money on the line.

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.

Re:No problem.

[bmimatt]

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. Could be something as 'unrelated' as using Goog Analytics. You visit site X, the analytics code collects information about your visit and stores it on Goog servers. Then you visit site Y and code used to embed youtube video does the same. Rinse, Repeat.

Re:No problem.

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:No problem.

[Pope Hagbard]

I'm a big fan of Privacy Badger, mainly because it can automatically block trackers based on behavior rather than having to rely on someone's premade block list.

https://www.eff.org/privacybad...

The same folks provide HTTPS Everywhere, another must-have.

https://www.eff.org/HTTPS-EVER...

Do not do anything ...

[BarbaraHudson]

"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.

Do Not Track never meant anything

[beakerMeep]

"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.

Re:Do Not Track never meant anything

[CODiNE]

It's the tracking quivalent of the "evil bit" in TCP.

DNT is useless by design

[janoc]

Did anyone actually believe that the do-not-track flag was effective? There is pretty much no way it can be enforced and the companies can do whatever they want in most cases. E.g. Facebook does not honor it outright, most advertising networks ignore it as well. It was only a silly boondoggle to quickly placate the regulator/lawmakers by showing that the self-regulation in the advertising industry actually "works" and thus no heavy-handed regulation is necessary. That flag is completely useless otherwise.

If you want some semblance of privacy from the pervasive tracking, you must use a solution that is completely under your control - i.e. ad blockers, NoScript, Ghostery, block Flash, etc. and not something that relies on the good will of the advertiser that they will obey some silly flag.

Why is Apple in this headline?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any excuse beyond "Apple is better link bait than Facebook"?

Re:No problem.

[Tom]

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.