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DuckDuckGo Warns that Google Does Not Respect 'Do Not Track' Browser Setting (spreadprivacy.com)
DuckDuckGo cautions internet users that companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, do not respect the "Do Not Track" setting on web browsers. From a report: According to DuckDuckGo's research, over 77% of US adults are not aware of that fact. The "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting on browsers sends signals to web services to stop tracking a user's activity. However, the DNT setting is only a voluntary signal which websites are not obligated to respect. "It can be alarming to realize that Do Not Track is about as foolproof as putting a sign on your front lawn that says "Please, don't look into my house" while all of your blinds remain open."
If your browser tells sites to not track, and they still do, impose some hefty fines.
You forgot, Google took away the don't be evil motto
Advertising destroys every medium in which it is used. Ever.
This is because there is absolutely no restraining force to limit or self police behavior of advertisers. So is Google's behavior any surprise?
Begin rant.
I'll start with Radio and not comment.
TV had a tolerable number of ads. Somewhere during the golden age of TV the ads got more and more. And the quality of ads went way down. It used to be that the ads were somewhat entertaining. Then more and more ads. Lower quality programming.
People fled to cable. The promise of cable was no ads. That illusion didn't last long. But it was tolerable. And programming content was superior. And included the network TV channels if you needed to see a program on network TV. Then the ads got worse. The content got worse. More and more time was spent on ads, and less on content. It got so bad that after an ad, when the content resumed, there would be more ads walking out onto the show you are watching, obscuring things, sometimes important things.
People fled to internet TV. Some of it has ads, some does not. Hulu offers ad free for a higher price, which I'm willing to pay. Netflix is free of ads. When they started considering ads, I wrote them about how this is a slippery slope. Netflix has not put in ads, yet. I also suggested if the did introduce ads, have a higher priced ad-free tier. HBO, Starz and Amazon Prime are free of ads.
Now YouTube has ads. It was okay at first. Now it's getting intolerable. They push YouTube Red. But their ads have gotten so bad, I may just forego ever getting YT Red because I find the ads so offensive.
The web. No ads at first. It was about information. Then ads came. And came and came and came. And ad / malware networks. Then sites where an article was one paragraph per page, and each page had that one paragraph surrounded in dozens of blinking flashing dancing animated seizure inducing ads. And deceptive ads that try to look like an OS window warning you of something. And the advertising networks, and even host web sites were complicit in this. So I have no sympathy for sites complaining about ad blockers. If a site isn't usable with an ad blocker, I never go there again. No site has or ever will have anything valuable enough to overcome this. And since I won't go there, I won't find out even if they did. And I don't care.
Ads are a blight on our cities. And even the countryside. Miles and miles of billboards along roads. It's disgusting.
These people know no bounds. Absolutely none. Phones, tablets, personal computers all spy on us now for the sake of ads! Our cars spy on us for ads. Smart TVs spy on us for ads. IoT devices spy on us for ads.
Once the technology is available, these people will lobby to require ads on the inside of our eyelids. Yes really. Mark my words. They'll probably want your internal vital organs at some point.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The Fable of the Wolves and the Sheepherders. (or Why DNT Is Stupid)
Originally Published on October 27, 2012
Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.
One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.
The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.
The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.
Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.
Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.
The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to not allow farmers to tell the sheep about the red paint, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.
Some Sheep as well as
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!