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Microsoft To Stop Enabling 'Do Not Track' By Default

Posted by Soulskill on from the do-not-do-not-track dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The history of the do-not-track setting for web browsers has been rife with debate. It took a long time for web experts to come to anything resembling a consensus on how it should be implemented, and the process isn't over yet. Microsoft took criticism for enabling the do-not-track setting by default in Internet Explorer. While it sounds good in theory, many worried it would just spur websites to completely disregard the setting (and some, like Yahoo, did just that). Now, Microsoft has reversed their stance. The do-not-track setting will not be enabled by default in the company's future browsers. They say, "Put simply, we are updating our approach to DNT to eliminate any misunderstanding about whether our chosen implementation will comply with the W3C standard. ... As a result, DNT will not be the default state in Windows Express Settings moving forward, but we will provide customers with clear information on how to turn this feature on in the browser settings should they wish to do so."

4 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How many sites actually honor DNT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work in the internet advertising industry and the big exchanges do respect it. In fact, if companies that work with them don't follow DNT they can get booted.

    Mind you this is just the more legit companies though.

  2. Re:How many sites actually honor DNT? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

    My understanding was that DNT has mostly been a failure

    It failed because Microsoft deliberately sabotaged it. DNT was supposed to be an affirmative indication of customer preference. But instead, Microsoft set it automatically in their browsers, prompting most websites to ignore it, since it no longer meant anything.

  3. Re:How many sites actually honor DNT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seconding that. I've certainly spent enough sprints working on good opt-out handling.

    It's mostly big advertisers that respect DNT because 1) they have something to lose and 2) they have the resources to bother. Probably the main websites you actually visit don't care, but the ads that show up on them do. With DNT on you might see more repeats of ads, because they can't limit how many times they show you one, etc.

  4. Re:What is this IE you speak of? by LordLimecat · · Score: 3, Informative

    Firefox doesnt look so hot when you look at the number of CVEs, particularly remote code execution:

    http://www.cvedetails.com/prod...
    http://www.cvedetails.com/vers...

    It beats IE 11 by a small margin in RCEs, but loses in total vulns. Its really not that great of a browser, lacking common security mechanisms like plugin isolation.