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Microsoft To Stop Enabling 'Do Not Track' By Default
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."
My understanding was that DNT has mostly been a failure, though I don't know how much of that has to do with IE's default behavior. Am I wrong about that? Are there lots of sites out there honoring the DNT setting?
The solution is to *block* their ability to track.
Sorry, but depending on whose statistics you're looking at, you have it completely backwards. Most of the world still uses IE, and a Firefox is a distant 3rd.
https://www.netmarketshare.com...
I don't respond to AC's.
when websites completely ignore do-not-track, and browsers like Chrome and Safari send all your usage-stats to Google and Apple whether you like it or not.
DNT was always a tongue in cheek sentiment. it was an industries attempt to divert attention from the widely embraced practice of turning users into cattle. the level of transparency through which disregard of the setting was employed only further served to relegate it to yet another pointless feature in an ecosystem of browsers that increasingly dont give two shits about their user
so we've got IE, which is the drooling invalid of browsers for all intents and purposes, telling us its no longer honouring an empty standard as if thats something new the brand has just recently started doing. Chrome, which while offered was never enabled and never honoured by the parent developer, made do not track into just another keeping up with the jones' hedge clipping effort. And finally firefox, which embeds google and bing as default search agents and pushes targeted advertising to the user through its tabs. Firefox is probably the last chance a user has at a truly open browsing experience for what its worth, video chat option not withstanding. what makes it useful is the fact that you can truly take privacy into your own hands.
Use duckduckgo, disable cookies, whitelist known sites, and employ bolt-ons like noscript, adblock, and https everywhere as well as flash cookie deletion plugins to turn the internet back into something recognizeable again. But remember, expecting the industry that makes money off paying internet users through their willful ignorance and by deceptive practices to get its fists out of the cookie jar and show some respect and restraint is like hoping a slaughterhouse starts caring about the color of the kill floor and the ambiance of the stun bolt.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They claim that future IE releases will have this "feature" turned off by default now. They didn't say anything about Spartan. The trojan will continue to infest the battlements of Troy.
So they keep bullying Android device makers with patents, reducing privacy, etc. I see.
How about making part of the browser installation a check for whether DNT's been set one way or the other, and if it hasn't then prompt the user for how they want it set? It's one dialog during the first installation with a track/do-not-track answer (with no default button so just pressing Enter without thinking won't do anything), and then there's no ambiguity whatsoever about whether the DNT status is the user's choice or not.
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.
It's far more effective to simply disable the means of tracking you.
And far more impossible. How do you propose to stop a webserver from logging your visit or knowing your IP?
They can log *a* visit, and know *an* IP, but they can't uniquely identify you versus the 1,753 other people at that Starbucks today.
They can with browser fingerprinting. It's easy and you don't even need cookies enabled to do it.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
That's (Windows) (Express Settings), not (Windows Express) (Settings). I'm pretty sure it applies to the small number of settings you're forced to click through when you first configure your machine, and the presence of a setting in that set doesn't mean they're hiding other settings in the system.
Opt-in is the right thing to do.
Opt-out is the wrong thing to do
If some action of yours is "optional," let the user CHOOSE if they want it done; don't inflict it on them and assume that's ok. EVER.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is, but since all those followers don't want to use this technique but instead prefer Javascripts and cookies on the sites you visit they make it quite easy for you: use plugins like Ghostery to block them.