Apple Removes Useless 'Do Not Track' Feature From Latest Beta Versions of Safari (macrumors.com)

In the release notes for Safari 12.1, the new version of Apple's browser installed in iOS 12.2, Apple says that it is removing support for the "Do Not Track" feature, which is now outdated. From a news writeup: "Removed support for the expired Do Not Track standard to prevent potential use as a fingerprinting variable," the release note reads. The same feature was also removed from Safari Technology Preview today, Apple's experimental macOS browser, and it is not present in the macOS 10.14.4 betas. According to Apple, Do Not Track is "expired" and support is being eliminated to prevent its use as, ironically, a fingerprinting variable for tracking purposes. It is entirely up to the advertising companies to comply with the "Do Not Track" messaging, and it has no actual function beyond broadcasting a user preference.

Comments

Naive

[orev]

It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists. Did we really expect the ad companies who are already abusing data collection to the fullest extent possible to stop doing it (and go out of business) simply because you asked them nicely using an obscure setting in the browser?

Re:Naive

[ShanghaiBill]

It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists.

No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.

"Do Not Track" was supposed to represent an affirmative request by the user to not be tracked. But that is not how Microsoft implemented. They turned the flag on for everyone, so that it meant nothing. They intentionally poisoned the concept.

Re: Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Insert obligatory love song titled
Creimette You Belong In My Bed

Re:Naive

[Sneftel]

Only by default. If someone wanted to be tracked, they could easily turn the flag off. And if you had to guess, would you say a given user would want to be tracked or not?

Advertisers aren't automatically entitled to benefit from a user's apathy.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft did not poison the well. The companies that ignore the do not track flag are the ones that are at fault here. Microsoft actually did what most people would want - NOT to be tracked.

The real question is should tech companies track people the way they do. If you ask the average person they would almost certainly say "No I do not want to be tracked"

Companies should require users to opt-in to be tracked via cross-site identifiers. Not the other way around.

None of that means companies shouldn't be able to use cookies to store site preferences etc. It's the correlation of identifiers from one site to others that is the bad part.

Re:Naive

[ShanghaiBill]

Only by default. If someone wanted to be tracked, they could easily turn the flag off.

Almost nobody is going to do that. Which makes the feature completely useless. Which was Microsoft's intent. They won.

Re:Naive

[orev]

I see we have found one of the aforementioned idealists. It's extremely naive to think that any ad company whose entire business model is suck up as much data as possible is going to honor the user's preference to "please don't track me". It's like asking a hungry bear "please don't eat me". This approach was doomed to failure from the beginning without some very heavy handed regulation and penalties enforced by governments (like DMCA), which of course was never going to happen. As usual in a tech discussion, the focus here is on some completely irrelevant technical detail of some software setting, instead of the actually real causes of the issue, which are the market forces and business realities. Whatever Microsoft set the default to is completely irrelevant; their browser market share is tiny anyway.

Re: Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not track would only have been useful if trackers were required by law to abide by it. Because it is voluntary on both sides, if we chose to use it. The other side can just ignore it.
When the trackers noticed this guess what happened. The fact is to them you are not a user, you are a product. The only way we will get our privacy back is if laws force tracking agency's to abide by what we tell them.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea was that companies who ignored it would be identified and shamed by the larger public.

Just another example of how libertarianism fails in the face of reality.

Re: Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Creimette is too busy for your buggery. He is making YouTube videos and studying for his Windows 10 certification after work.

Re:Naive

[Sneftel]

No idea what MS's intent was, but what makes the feature completely useless is that it relies on advertisers' cooperation. Are you seriously suggesting that if it had been an opt-out rather than an opt-in, advertisers would have obeyed it? That they would have foregone tracking those people who really really didn't want to be tracked?

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists.

No, it was an intentionally broken solution put forward by corporations who wanted to give lip service to privacy but who knew damned well this would be abused and ignored ... it was always meaningless.

They did this to stave off someone trying to pass laws instead of the bullshit voluntary compliance it always was.

Did we really expect the ad companies who are already abusing data collection to the fullest extent possible

Nobody but the companies who proposed this, the rest of us all knew it was a lie from the start. The problem is to the average user, it sounded like it would work.

The reality was, it was never intended to work, and it never did.

This is from 2012, and pretty much spells out how the DNT was always useless.

Do Not Track was always a lie, and it was never put forward by 'idealistic technologists', it was an idea put forward by greedy assholes. It was a complete fiction from the get go.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

If you cannot rely on companies following agreed on standards you end up with laws. Instead of Do Not Track we now have the GDPR and that is an annoyance to everyone involved.

Re:Naive

[Sneftel]

DNT could have become part of GDPR! That was the perfect opportunity for it to gain actual legal definition and legal force. But you'd better believe that GDPR is the result of regulatory capture. And as annoying as GDPR is for engaged, privacy-conscious consumers, it's the perfect camouflage for the advertisers.

Re:Naive

[ShanghaiBill]

Are you seriously suggesting that if it had been an opt-out rather than an opt-in, advertisers would have obeyed it?

It could have evolved into something workable, possibly with legislative backing. But Microsoft prevented that from happening by ensuring it was a complete and utter failure from the very start.

Re:Naive

[AmiMoJo]

It was worth doing because now we can say to advertisers "we gave you the opportunity, you blew it, and now you are blocked." Ad blocking gained a lot of legitimacy when advertisers decided that they were going to ignore polite requests.

Re:Naive

[ShanghaiBill]

It's extremely naive to think that any ad company whose entire business model is suck up as much data as possible is going to honor the user's preference to "please don't track me".

False. Several companies, including Google, initially honored the flag. They only abandoned it in the face of Microsoft's sabotage.

Re:Naive

[Sneftel]

The same law that would give DNT legal force could also have exempted browsers that had it on by default. (Just like advertisers could have ignored DNT specifically from IE, a feature that was considered for web servers.) Whether it could have evolved into something workable is debatable, but it's clear that IE wouldn't have been enough to kill the idea outright.

Re:Naive

[93 Escort Wagon]

Advertisers aren't automatically entitled to benefit from a user's apathy.

To verify just how widespread that apathy is, you need look no further than at who holds a commanding lead in the web browser market.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Did we really expect the ad companies who are already abusing data collection to the fullest extent possible to stop doing it (and go out of business) simply because you asked them nicely

No, but it was good to try.

We asked nicely. They didn't play ball. Now we're justified in using any and all measures.

Sure, we were probably justified in trying to secure our browser leaks from the very beginning, but we threw them a bone so we can use it against them later if they complain, or worse, they go crying to the government for permission to use force (i.e. laws against securing browsers). If they try that now, we have reams of evidence to say "Well, if you insist on getting the government involved, then it looks like the thing to do is to outlaw their business instead of outlawing security."

It was all about suggesting a nice, civilized compromise prior to slow escalation. Shoot a warning shot over the enemy's head, before you splatter his brains all over the pavement. Mueller isn't starting with indicting the president; that's just where it ends after he indicts (and turns some of) the caporegimes.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked for several online advertising companies where I was specifically tasked with implementing (and testing) do not track and opt out, you are wrong. We, and I myself personally implemented code to ensure do-not-track worked. And it did, as well as we could achieve it. We jumped through serious hoops to make the code work as well as possible - users identified as do-not-track or opted out (before do-not-track) were not tracked at all. We actively deleted any history we had if a user set that bit.

Before Do Not Track we had working opt out code too. The biggest problem was actually blackberries back when they were popular. The browser and persistent state storage for blackberries was entirely broken and you couldn't count on a cookie for "opted out" being set.

So we would get angry emails saying that the opt out didn't work, and invariably it was from a blackberry owner. If it wasn't a blackberry owner (this was before do-not-track) it was almost always by a user concerned about privacy who deleted their cookies daily.

We actually spent a lot of time, effort and yes, money, on ensuring users who opted out stayed opted out.

The industry has changed in the last 5 years though. Many technologists at companies LAUGHED when I talked to them about opting users out. They just didn't give a damn. So I have very little sympathy for the online advertisers.

Eventually I got out of online advertising even though it was technically an interesting field. Years before the facebook hearings I'd come to the conclusion that social media had turned what had been a great place (the days of usenet news etc) into a hellish nightmare.

I'm hoping social media somehow becomes better, but I don't myself use stuff like facebook, and yes I use an ad blocker. The cross company tracking via exchanges has become so big-brother it's a nightmare.

My advice to friends and family nowadays is NOT to trust the ad companies, because even though some are still reputable there are so many others that totally disregard privacy that you are best off treating them all that way.

I should also say we spent a bunch of time actively scrubbing personally identifiable information too. We didn't want it, but the number of times I personally added code to scrub something that a site was sending (and shouldn't have been!) was in the 100's.

Re:Naive

[ChatHuant]

No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.

Bullshit. It was absolutely not a reasonable solution, and it was not "sabotaged" by Microsoft. It was a publicity stunt by Google and Mozilla, and its goal was to block the pro-consumer design proposed to the W3C by Microsoft. Briefly, the MS proposal boiled down to something like uBlock/AdBlock built directly into the browser. Google couldn't abide this, so they forced the current DNT design through the W3C standardization committee instead.
Here are a few reasons why this is not a reasonable, pro-consumer design:
  - there is no way for a consumer to enforce their choice against a non-cooperating tracking site
  - there isn't even a way to confirm whether your DNT request was honored or not
  - there is no way to find out in advance whether a certain site will honor DNT at all
  - it's designed as opt-out by default, which is a cynical ploy to profit from the fact that the majority of consumers aren't very technically knowledgeable. Any privacy-related settings should be opt-in by design
By making the option default to on in IE, Microsoft exposed the uselessness of the "standard". The subsequent spat raised awareness about how much of a lie Google's DNT is. This is a good thing - lies need to be challenged.
I previously posted some more details on how the alleged standard came to be, with links. I refer you to that post.

Re:Naive

[BringsApples]

It could have evolved into something workable, possibly with legislative backing.

No one wants to be tracked, so this setting is asinine. If we were going to address this legislatively, then it'd more than likely be all or none (tracking is legal or illegal).

Just do what you're supposed to do on the internet (don't use it to do illegal stuff), and use an ad-blocker. If you're being tracked, it won't bother you.

Re:Naive

[dgatwood]

Microsoft did not poison the well. The companies that ignore the do not track flag are the ones that are at fault here.

Microsoft turning on that flag for everyone could not possibly have made any difference in the behavior of advertisers that were already ignore that flag. The only thing that turning the flag on by default did was give advertisers that *didn't* already ignore it a compelling reason to do so. They most certainly did poison the well.

Microsoft actually did what most people would want - NOT to be tracked.

Citation needed. If you ask random people, "Would you rather see random ads for things you don't care about or ads that direct you towards products you might actually be interested in," I guarantee you that 99% or more of people would choose the latter. This is what tracking makes possible. It doesn't just benefit advertisers. It also benefits users.

The real question is should tech companies track people the way they do. If you ask the average person they would almost certainly say "No I do not want to be tracked"

If you asked the average person, "Do you want us to give you a shot," they will also say no. If you asked the average person, "Do you want to be vaccinated against a deadly pandemic plague that is sweeping across Europe right now and will almost certainly hit our shores in a matter of days," they will all say yes. Asking people a question without giving them the information needed to make an informed decision is a useless thing to do, because the results are meaningless.

The right question to ask is not whether users should be tracked, but rather whether users should have the right to see, inspect, correct, and, if desired, delete data that has been collected or inferred about them. If users have that right, then very, very few people will want to not be tracked, because the benefit of tracking will greatly exceed the negligible loss of privacy.

Re:Naive

[ShanghaiBill]

No one wants to be tracked

False. I want to be tracked.

Benefits:
Tracking makes the internet more responsive to my desires.
I see more relevant search results
Inputs autofill more accurately.
When I see ads they are more likely to be for something I want.
When they see I looked at a product, but didn't buy, I may get a better offer later.

Downsides:
Nothing that I can see.

Re:Naive

[Chewbacon]

I never expected advertisers to honor it anyway. Made me wonder why developers didn't take it into their own hands and the browser circumvent tracking on its own... then it dawned on me: because it's supported by ads.

Re:Naive

[Aighearach]

GDPR requires informed consent, so it may be that if the "do not track" is sent, that you can't receive consent because you already have the answer.

Time will tell, we don't really know the implications of GDPR until we have experience with the enforcement decisions, and the various Courts in Europe have ruled on all sorts of issues like this.

Re:Naive

[BringsApples]

Ok, let's look at this.

Tracking makes the internet more responsive to my desires.

I don't even understand what this means. Even pornhub doesn't do this.

I see more relevant search results

I'm not sure this is true, but you're not sure it is either.

Inputs autofill more accurately

I feel like you're just reaching for straws here.

When I see ads they are more likely to be for something I want

OK, this one actually made me laugh. You don't know what you want already?

When they see I looked at a product, but didn't buy, I may get a better offer later.

I wonder why you think this way. Is it based on experience?

Downsides: Nothing that I can see

How about this for a silly dream...
I'm building a greenhouse to temporarily cover some tropical trees that I grow at home, and I'm doing it on the cheap, using PVC pipes and plastic. I want to get some really good tape that'll be strong for the whole winter, through rain and all. I search all sorts of tape and find that gorilla tape is the best for my use. Right after I get finished with the internet/computer, my 8yo daughter, who does gymnastics and is trying to be able to do a full split, wants to look up 'how to get your splits' videos on youtube. So now to whatever tracking engine that's been tracking me, the fact that I'm looking for strong tape, and videos of little girls spreading their legs makes me look like a possible pedophile. Now consider that I run a daycare.

If my silly example of the possibility of things going wrong seem silly to you, that's probably because the whole idea of tracking users is silly.

Re:Naive

[Hillie]

That's like someone who has the gold of Fort Knoxx leaving his door wide open and gold in plain sight and then have a sign saying "Please don't rob me."

Your rebuttal pretty much proves that it is exactly what orev said it is. Microsoft didn't ruin anything, well besides their OS.

Re:Naive

[Cochonou]

Even if it had stayed opt-in, what makes you think they would not have abandoned to honour it as soon as the number of users enabling it became significant ?

Re:Naive

[ChatHuant]

Google, initially honored the flag

That doesn't seem true either. All the documents I saw are unanimous in stating Google never honored the flag, even when they were petitioned to do so. And they only came out publicly about it last year.
So, if you can find any proof that Google used to honor DNT, but stopped doing so after it was enabled by default in IE, please post it.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is M$oft actually implemented it correctly and all the other browsers did not. Thanks for clarity.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists.

Understatement of the year. Fucking idiotic is what it was. Anyone with half a brain could see that. Why browser makers and W3C wasted a decade on this horseshit abortion of an idea goes way beyond mere stupidity and into suspiciously corrupt territory.

Who benefits from this drawn out shit show? Advertisers, trying to stave off legislation by showing that market solutions to privacy are spontaneously appearing, without shaving one goddamn cent off their bottom lines. Trace back support for this putrid crapfest and I'm positive you'll find advertisers' rotten fingerprints all over it.

Re:Naive

[ShanghaiBill]

Advertisers aren't automatically entitled to benefit from a user's apathy.

Advocates aren't automatically entitled to insist they represent the interests of the apathetic.

Some of us are very passionate about our apathy.

Re:Naive

[Darinbob]

Being tracked should always be opt-in!

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

There was nothign fucking reasonable about it. It was a complete design failure. A feature that would only be honoured if only a tiny percent of people used it was not a reasonable solution. Microsoft did us all a huge favour killing this bullshit.

Re:Naive

[bloodhawk]

No it couldn't have. It was designed specifically to prevent anything workable from being implemented as right from the start it was intended to stop the standards bodies and authorities from imposing something that would be meaningful. Ad companies didn't want something effective and the moment it became effective they would all instantly opt out. The whole thing was a fucking scam.

Re:Naive

[bloodhawk]

Well you are in the minority. The rest of us don't want to be tracked, so an opt-in for you would have been a workable solution. A system that intentionally ignores what most people want is NOT a workable solution

Re:Naive

[Actually, I do RTFA]

If the flag were backed up by laws that severely fined companies who violated it, I would expect most ad companies would respect it. After all, non-tailored ads are still worth something (Superbowl ads were non-tailored and over $10.5 million a minute)

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ask random people, "Would you rather see random ads for things you don't care about or ads that direct you towards products you might actually be interested in," I guarantee you that 99% or more of people would choose the latter.

You're wrong. I've done this, in multiple groups of people. The majority answer is always along the lines of "I ignore ads, so I don't care".

Asking people a question without giving them the information needed to make an informed decision is a useless thing to do, because the results are meaningless.

And yet this is exactly what you posited above. Instead of your hand-waving bullshit, go ahead and do what you just said. Ask people if they want everything they do on the internet tracked and collated, and that information sold to various third parties they're not even aware of who then use it to build profiles of them, and oh, by the way, they *might* also see ads which are more targeted toward their specific interests rather than targeted toward the content of the pages they're visiting.

Because *that* is the reality we're dealing with, and yes, even though you may not admit it, you know what the answer is, and it's not "I'm okay with that".

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious; does it hurt to be as stupid as you are?

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

How much pain are you in?

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't "poison the concept" of a user stable flag by setting the flag.

Only a complete idiot could think that Do Not Track was ever going to mean anything. If anything Mocrosoft called the bluff of the liars who were claiming they intended to honor it.

Re:Naive

[dgatwood]

You're wrong. I've done this, in multiple groups of people. The majority answer is always along the lines of "I ignore ads, so I don't care".

Yes, most people say that, but it really isn't true. If they saw an ad for something that really interested them, they would notice it, and they would look into it further (and maybe even buy something). The problem is that the overwhelming majority of ads are completely irrelevant to the person seeing them, and as a result, people ignore them. Fix the first problem, showing only ads that have a real chance of resulting in user action, and the second problem goes away, because users stop being numb to the ads.

... and that information sold to various third parties they're not even aware of who then use it to build profiles of them ...

You just changed the rules pretty dramatically with that part. An ad distributor knowing things about me is very different from them offering that information for sale to arbitrary third parties. Targeted ads don't really work that way. The actual advertisers know how many times an ad was shown, but not who saw it, specifically. That's an important distinction from a privacy perspective. It's the difference between knowing there are 1900 people in the U.S. who like midget porn, and knowing who those 1900 people are. (Yes, this number is made up.)

oh, by the way, they *might* also see ads which are more targeted toward their specific interests rather than targeted toward the content of the pages they're visiting

Substitute "would" instead of "might". The main thing that is missing right now is a reliable signal about whether you've bought something already, and whether you are likely to buy that same thing again in the near term. Targeted ads are often delayed so much that they're useless by the time you start seeing them.

The big thing you're missing is that having more information about consumers would result in fewer ads, both because advertisers wouldn't show ads with low likelihood of success and because each ad that they do show would pay more because of the higher likelihood of success. And the ads that do get shown would be more useful to the consumer. If you think that fewer, more targeted ads isn't a benefit to consumers, then you're naïve.

From my perspective, ads that interrupt me and prevent me from doing things are evil and should die. Ads that play sound and video over my cellular connection should also die. But low-bandwidth, passive ads are ignorable, which means they don't really do much harm, and occasionally, they even end up being useful. The problem is that those occasions are so rare that they almost go unnoticed. (Also, when they might have been useful, 99% of the time, they're things like "shop for XXX on site YYY" and I think "Oh, I hadn't thought about searching for it there," and then I try it, only to discover that site YYY doesn't actually sell XXX. But that's kind of a targeting problem, too, just of a different sort.)

Re:Naive

[tepples]

You don't know what you want already?

Correct. Not everybody is already aware of the existence of all products and services that might interest them.

Re:Naive

[drinkypoo]

It was worth doing because now we can say to advertisers "we gave you the opportunity, you blew it, and now you are blocked."

They already had the opportunity to not be assholes, and they blew it by tracking people in the first place. The DNT flag only ever aided fingerprinting, so it was only ever stupid.

Re:Naive

[AHuxley]

Browser brands that are ad brands will just pass on their approved ads.
The need is for an advanced browser that still lets the user block all ads.

Re:Naive

[drinkypoo]

Not everybody is already aware of the existence of all products and services that might interest them.

That kind of information belongs in trade publications and the like, the ultimate targeted advertising. It never made any sense to pop up ads to people on unrelated content. It only alienates potential customers. You want your content to be where they will find it if they go looking for it, not to pop up when they're looking for something else.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually think the idea had merit precisely because it would be ignored.

The first step towards regulation is giving industries the chance to solve their own problem; allow them to propose a fix and see how it does. That was the original idea of DNT.

Of course, many tracking companies would still ignore it, but then you have evidence that they cannot be trusted to self-regulate, so legislation is obviously necessary.

Giving tracking companies an out by devaluing DNT has likely set back the proper regulation of the industry significantly.

Re: Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this comment to be informative. I always thought DNT seemed crippled by design, and this explains much of that quite simply.

Re:Naive

[squiggleslash]

If someone wanted to be tracked, they could easily turn the flag off.

No, they couldn't easily turn the flag off, because most of the time they wouldn't even be aware there is such a flag.

Microsoft could have handled this differently, for example putting up a dialog when you start the browser for the first time, asking whether the user wants to allow advertisers to record information about their web histories in order to place more relevant ads. Then (1) the user would know exactly what the flag is about and what the implications are, and (2) the user would know (because they're forced to) how to switch the flag on or off.

But they didn't. They turned off something most people didn't know existed or why it existed so didn't know how to turn on. So the setting became meaningless. Sabotage.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

DNT is already supported by GDPR, this is why this is such a travesty.

Given advertisers need explicit consent to track under GDPR, default-on DNT is a mechanism by which that can be enforced. If an advertiser for example tracks someone using IE that has DNT on then it's clear that user has not consented to being tracked and so any advertiser doing that is clearly in breach of GDPR. It's certainly more muddy with Firefox, Google, and Safari that decided to take the anti-consumer route of defaulting tracking to on because there's on inherent explicit consent there as the choice has been forced on the user by default.

If Apple really cared at all about privacy as they pretend to in their marketing then the real solution here is for them to turn it to default-on and take to court, or fund consumer protection organisations to take to court any advertiser not honoring it. The irony here is that if Microsoft is the only browser that decides to keep it, and then also decides to do exactly this, then they can genuinely claim to be the only company caring about privacy so there's a clear chance for them here. It's pretty clear that as DNT is a standard that ignoring it is grounds for a GDPR breach.

The real nail in the coffin for it was Mozilla shamefully deciding to protect it's Google revenue by fucking consumers over and favouring advertisers to keep Google happy, it was always going to be dead from the start when the purportedly user friendly browser was doing anything but being user friendly.

Hopefully Microsoft earn some brownie points and show how it's done, but I won't hold my hopes up. It'd be great if they did decide to put their money where there mouth is an enforce DNT adherence through the courts using GDPR which would be fairly trivial to do given GDPRs requirement for informed consent and IE having a standardised mechanism for providing that consent.

Re:Naive

[BringsApples]

Wow, so you enjoy watching TV shows and the commercials. I'm truly envious. But the more I think over this concept, the more it sounds like the beginnings of a hoarder.

Re:Naive

[BringsApples]

I promise I'm not trying to be a dick here. How do you feel about this

You're walking in the mall, passing a shoe store. From inside the shoe store, out comes a man that begins to follow you. You go into a candle store, and when you come out, that guy approaches and says, "I'm from $SHOE_STORE and I see you like things that smell good. I'd like to tell you about our fantastic new shoe-inserts that remove foul odors..." He does this at each store that you enter and exit. Now imagine that it's not just one man, but several.

Are you cool with that too? Because, to me, it's exactly the same as tracking users on the internet.

Re:Naive

[drinkypoo]

Microsoft turning on that flag for everyone could not possibly have made any difference in the behavior of advertisers that were already ignore that flag. The only thing that turning the flag on by default did was give advertisers that *didn't* already ignore it a compelling reason to do so. They most certainly did poison the well.

People were already tracking users by fingerprinting at the time when the DNT flag was added, so it was obvious that it would not only not reduce tracking, but actually increase it since it would make fingerprinting easier. Turning it on by default when virtually nobody would ever turn it off actually makes it LESS useful in tracking, because it's less of a differentiator. So no, you are 100% wrong about this.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot if you think any advertiser was ever going to respect that setting. It's the equivalent of answering spam/scam calls and asking to be put on their "do not call list". They won't stop calling you and now they have confirmation that it's a live line.

Re:Naive

[tepples]

Alternate scenario: You walk in the mall, and each store charges $10 admission whether you buy anything in there or not. The admission is good for unlimited return visits within the next 30 days but not good at other stores.

Are you cool with that too? Because, to me, it's exactly the same as the paywall scenario that's likely to happen soon after publishers stop tracking users on the internet.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

If you asked the average person, "Do you want us to give you a shot," they will also say no.

Depends on their culture. Some would say "sure, pour away!"

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

the gullible

Re:Naive

[aybiss]

"If they saw an ad for something that really interested them, they would notice it, and they would look into it further (and maybe even buy something)."

You think this because you're just the kind of person advertisers love. A gullible rube with more dollars than sense. There's nothing wrong with that, but you have to realise that most people aren't like that.

Re:Naive

[BringsApples]

I think you're confusing "tracking", with "ads". Those two aren't the same thing.

Removing it is the wrong solution

[QuietLagoon]

The proper solution to the problem is for the ad companies to abide by it, either voluntarily or by law. By removing it, Apple is telling the ad companies that Apple no longer cares about its users' privacy, and is inviting the ad companies to abuse Apple Safari users even more.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[Anonymous Coward]

actually removing javascript should do away with plenty of tracking

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[jeffasselin]

They are stating that this setting can actually be used to track you even more; it’s worse than useless, it is in fact detrimental to privacy. They also said they would step up built-in measures that should make tracking harder, which is definitely better than a useless flag.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[pr0fessor]

It would be even better if it detected those ignoring the do not track request and gave you the option to send an incident report to the email address listed on their domain registry. I imagine that would get their attention.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper solution to the problem is for the ad companies to abide by it, either voluntarily or by law.

Yeah, good luck with that.

By removing it, Apple is telling the ad companies that Apple no longer cares about its users' privacy, and is inviting the ad companies to abuse Apple Safari users even more.

Bullshit, by removing it Apple is telling everyone that the feature was utterly useless and the ad companies were tracking you anyway ... Do Not Track simply never worked, and it wasn't designed to work, it was there to give the illusion of doing something about privacy.

Want to know the real solution? Find anybody who works for an internet ad company and doxx them and their families -- they've decided we have no right to privacy, so they have forfeited theirs. They don't get to make those decisions for us, and they can't claim their privacy has to be respected while they violate ours.

Fuck them all.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[QuietLagoon]

... They are stating that this setting can actually be used to track you even more; ...

Using Safari on an Apple OS can be used to track you even more. So what's Apple's point? To stop using Apple products?

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[Anonymous Coward]

... They are stating that this setting can actually be used to track you even more; ...

Using Safari on an Apple OS can be used to track you even more. So what's Apple's point? To stop using Apple products?

Found the Apple Hater.

WTF are you even saying, idiot?

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[Shotgun]

No, the proper solution is to record the issue address when receiving a cookie, and only returning the value to that single IP.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple: "We're removing any ability for you to indicate to advertisers and others that you do not want to be tracked online from our browser. We pinky swear that we're adding better defenses under the hood where you can't see them."

Fanbois: "YESSSSSS!!!!!!!! *satisfactory groan*"

Nihilists: "HAH! Told you it was useless! *Holds nose up high*"

GDPR Supporters: "Well it could have been useful. *Ignores the fact it's a explicit statement of disapproval that could be used in court.*"

Zombie Steve Jobs: "APPLIANCE!!!!! *brainnnnsssss......*"

I think that pretty much sums up the responses.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say it very well, but he likely means that since a user is on Safari, and Apple no longer releases Safari for other platforms, any web service that reads browser IDs can be informed that the user is an Apple owner.

I'm sure we could say the same about IE/Microsoft, but it's a mildly valid point.

Re:Removing it is the wrong solution

[AHuxley]

Lets see what powerful 3rd party ad blocking software will be allowed in the browser.
Thats the test of a good brand that supports its users.
Can the users still block ads on their own computers?

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Do Not Track was a dumb joke to begin with. The web is a disgusting cesspool without noscript + firefox. so many companies surveying everything possible. Im impressed for Apple. Suck it microsoft diehards. Your OS is a piece of shit. Telemetry up your ass faggots.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels like somebody...wants to sell me something!

Your life isn't a spy movie.

Bad Apple

[fox171171]

Not useless.

With no "Do Not Track" flag, they can say "well, they didn't object".

With the DNT flag, yeah they can ignore it, but they can't claim that they thought everyone was okay with being tracked.

Re:Bad Apple

[WankerWeasel]

Apple replaced it with the far more effective prevention of cross-site tracking. No one obeyed Do Not Track from the start. Google didn't even abide by it. No one is going to come back and point to Apple's sole use of it as proof that consumers don't care.

Re: Bad Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have both

Re: Bad Apple

[Guspaz]

No you can't, because it was always going to be a feature that helped people track you since it required the variable to be reported to web servers.

Re:Bad Apple

[fox171171]

No one obeyed Do Not Track from the start. Google didn't even abide by it.

This is where it needed a minor improvement. The browser should put a big warning banner up saying "Warning: This site does not respect your Do Not Track request. It is tracking you against your will.".

Re:Bad Apple

[WankerWeasel]

Slashdot tracks ya (even with Ghostery and other protections). Has that stopped you from coming here?

Re:Bad Apple

[green1]

I'm not really in favour of permanent large warning banners that are on every webpage you go to at all times. This isn't a case of a couple of shady sites ignoring it. this is a case of NOBODY following it.

Anyone who has ever thought that the server should have control of the interaction between client and server on the open internet is extremely naive, or more likely, malicious. The internet is full of garbage, and the only solution is to give the client more ability to block it. asking the server to be nicer has never worked, and never will.

Re:Bad Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

It is useless because DNT only means "don't show me targeted ads", it doesn't mean "don't data mine me". Read all the ToS. That's how the companies which follow DNT use it. Now we can claim the industry isn't able to self regulate so laws should be passed. Sadly it'll be laws they like rather than consumer protection laws, but at least someone tried.

Like that was gong to work...

[ddtmm]

I always thought of it like the Do Not Call list. More like, the Do Not Hesitate to Call list.

Re:Like that was gong to work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mentioning the four magic words, "Do Not Call List", is the quickest and easiest way to get rid of telemarketers that I know of. I'm talking about the office phone, not your cell phone which you can simply not answer. From personal experience, hanging up results in them calling back day after day after day. Saying "not interested" also results in them calling back. The four magic words really do work.

Re:Like that was gong to work...

[green1]

The Do Not Call list "works". I have noticed a definite drop in calls since putting my number on it. It's not completely successful by any stretch, but it is something. For those people that say it just provides a list of numbers to call, I call BS, the address space of the public telephone network is far too small for companies to care about a list. They just start at the first number and dial to the last. Plus, if they are intending to call people on the list, they're better off not subscribing to the list, at least then they can pretend they didn't know better.

Of course the difference is that DNC has the weight of law behind it, and even that only gets it half way working. Without the law, it would be the same place DNT is, completely ignored.

Headline

[R.Mo_Robert]

Is it too much to ask for Slashdot to not plagiarize the exact headline from the MacRumors article they linked to? It's one thing if it's a concise, objective headline and two people may have independently arrived at similar wording, but the original headline is highly editorialized and Slashdot's plagiarism is glaringly obvious.

Re:Headline

[stealth_finger]

It's a link to that article, why would it not use the same headline? You'll shit your pants when you find the summaries here are lifted directly from the articles too.

Good move.

[Anonymous Coward]

apple should remove all their useless apps too. They are terrible at writing software.

Re:Good move.

[Anonymous Coward]

apple should remove all their useless apps too. They are terrible at writing software.

-1 OFFTOPIC

Re:Can't do 3rd party or DNS tracking vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off spammer. If we wanted to hear from you someone would have asked "APK can you please spam some of your hosts file shit all over the page?" but since no one did you can correctly assume that you are unwanted.

How about a do not send

[stealth_finger]

I'm not a browser developer or anything so I don't know if its possible but how about a do not send option to not send your data in the first place? OK they're going to need your IP so they can send data to you but do they really need to know your browser type/version, os, uptime and god knows whatever else the browser sends them? Send them nothing or send junk data.

Re:How about a do not send

[ceoyoyo]

Yeah, random data seems like a great idea. Nobody will do it though, because then they wouldn't be able to measure their browser market share stats....

Sounds like a great feature for a boutique browser based on webkit or chromium though.

Re:How about a do not send

[infolation]

Browser fingerprinting has evolved into an artform, and tracking companies don't need javascript, cookies, browser data, font lists or any of that stuff anymore to uniquely identify and track a browser.

Technologies like e-tag tracking ('cookieless cookies') mean that, unless you disable both disk and memory caching, a website can identify and track you.

Re:How about a do not send

[freeze128]

I would like to see how your pages render when you do that.

Re:How about a do not send

[green1]

On any sane site? exactly the same as they would render otherwise.

On most of the internet? a horrible mess.

The whole point to HTML was that the client could be in charge of choosing how to display it, and the server didn't need to care.... long gone are those days...

Re:How about a do not send

[AHuxley]

The ad brands work with the sites to build that into the site been visited.
The site content is the ad, the ad is the site content.

Definitely Naive

[sjbe]

No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.

I'm certainly no fan of Microsoft but come on... It was an absurd and naive idea that never had a prayer of working. WAY too much money at stake and too little oversight for it to ever have had a prayer of working. It could not possibly have worked without being supported by pretty strict laws in the US and EU.

"Do Not Track" was supposed to represent an affirmative request by the user to not be tracked.

Are you seriously arguing that it was supposed to be opt-in and that somehow that would have been a good thing? So people who aren't aware of the option should be screwed by default?

They turned the flag on for everyone, so that it meant nothing. They intentionally poisoned the concept.

It SHOULD be on by default. But even if it wasn't, it still would be roundly ignored by pretty much every company interested in tracking you. As requests go it was pretty much the equivalent of asking a shark to not eat you while you are bleeding in the water. It was a request and it was entirely predictable it was going to be ignored right from the start.

Re:Definitely Naive

[Ksevio]

Well it wasn't a great concept to begin with, but the only chance it had of working was if it was uncommon enough. Once MS enabled it for everyone, we were essentially back to before it existed.

Re:Definitely Naive

[bloodhawk]

If a setting that MOST people want would only work when MOST people don't use it then it was broken during design. This was all a con job by google to not have restrictions with actual teeth implemented.

THANK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

I seldom praise Apple for anything, but this time, they deserve it for being the first to admit that DNT is a total sham.

Good, I hope more browsers follow suit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always said from the beginning that Do Not Track was a stupid idea. It's an honour system that relies on honourless people to behave honourably. Please excuse my redundant Canadian usage of vowels. Sorry and all that.

Now, if I may redeem myself by being a tad rude.

I blame the EFF. They promoted the crap out of this. At first I was surprised and thought they'd be wiser and smarter than to make such an obvious, naive move. However, I recently learned that they've been abandoning their principles. They are now calling for online censorship, now that their major donors at the Open Society Foundation are being negatively affected by people exercising their right to speak freely.

Given this sudden shift in politics, I would imagine they don't have a single tech-minded person remaining in their organization anymore. Anyone with that sort of skill on their staff would have either quit for reasons of conscience, or been fired for being too nerdy and logical to fit in with an identity politics based management structure.

Normally the EFF would defend free speech to a fault, on principle, even if they *knew* the people whose rights they were defending were scumbags, but they're not the same EFF anymore. They've been bought, along with their friends at the ACLU, the SPLC and Amnesty International. Such a shame that organizations that used to be so principled and focused are now tax-exempt puppets of the corporations and politicians that control them.

Charity is dead. Apple gets it. Rant over.

All useless features should be removed

[sjbe]

The proper solution to the problem is for the ad companies to abide by it, either voluntarily or by law.

Ad companies will NEVER voluntarily respect the Do Not Track flag. WAY too much money at stake for that to happen. Seriously, you cannot be so naive as to think it was anything more than a feel good waste of time.

By removing it, Apple is telling the ad companies that Apple no longer cares about its users' privacy, and is inviting the ad companies to abuse Apple Safari users even more.

So you think removing an absurd feature that NEVER worked and never could have worked is somehow a bad idea? The only way DNT could possibly have worked is if it were backed up by laws with teeth which were never going to happen. Since it was a voluntary request those wishing to ignore it (for profit or malice) were free to do so legally.

This isn't Apple caring or not caring about privacy. It's Apple bowing to reality and not wasting resources on a useless feature that never had a prayer of doing what it's proponents hoped would happen. It was a dumb idea from the start and Apple is simply admitting this publicly.

Re:All useless features should be removed

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a dumb idea from the start and Apple is simply admitting this publicly.

Apple isn't Admitting ANYTHING.

"Admitting" implies that they were HIDING something.

They were simply STATING it publicly.

Big difference!

Re:All useless features should be removed

[Anonymous Coward]

It was not a feel good waste of time. If things go to court it is important to have expressed that you did not want to be tracked. It is the same as with rape. If the victim does not protest and tell the abuser to stop, then it can be argued it was consensual. What "do not track" did was to tell the abuser to stop, so you can now actually claim damages.

Re: All useless features should be removed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how it works.

Reminds me of past attempts

[slack_justyb]

Websites tracking you and gathering data is nothing new. When I first heard of DNT I recalled the wonderful nothing burger that was P3P. I'm pretty sure that in a few more years we'll have yet another attempt at trying to tell websites to behave for it to go absolutely nowhere. The problem here is that the Internet is ran "by suggestion and recommendation." Now running the web like that has made it wildly successful and to point, the W3's mission is to simply continue purposing, suggesting, and recommending standards for all to obey, but those sites are more than free to give any recommendation the middle finger. Asking a site to not track you is an enforcement issue and we're just not going to solve this problem by committee. The notion that W3 or any other standards body is going to "fix" this problem is foolish.

Asking sites to not track you will largely have to fall on local regulators to enact law. Given the global nature of the web, that's no small feat. However, companies are being given a golden chance to self regulate here and are clearly showing the inability to do so. It is beyond frustrating to see these large companies continually force people to indicate to their law makers to begin regulating the Internet simply because these companies cannot resist the allure of short term profit. It is at least my hope that in the future people recognize the level of inevitable regulation that was created during our time here, and remember the companies that drove them to it as the rapacious fools they really are. Folks like Mark Zuckerberg are nothing more than modern robber barons who by chance early entered an emerging market and rather than expand the competitiveness, act in any manner consistent with "fair market", or ensure economic diversity, they sought only to cripple competition, obscure interoperability, evade social responsibility to their country of origin and the citizens around them, and maximize profits by acting in completely amoral manners that if the tables turned would outrage them from the word "go".

Re:Reminds me of past attempts

[Anonymous Coward]

P5P! https://ericlawrence.com/Eric/p5p.asp

Sigh.

[ledow]

Was useless from the beginning.

No different to a Do Not Call list but with zero enforcement.

Was always doomed to fail.

I am literally more surprised that somebody BOTHERED to implement it at all.

Re:Sigh.

[Darinbob]

The do-not-call had the force of law behind it. Technically, it still does. There were exceptions made for political oriented phone calls, which is why for awhile those dominated most of the phone spam. Later on just about everything came back to spamming on the phone because there was zero enforcement. The mobile phone used to be the safe place after the land line was overwhelmed with spam, because only the land line showed up in the phone book (ie, if you want a list of people in Des Moines to market to). Later the mobile carriers started selling this data, so for the last two years my mobile phone in inundated and I never answer it either.

The logistics behind it all have made enforcement impractical. There's no way you as an individual know who the originating caller is, you don't even know what number the call came from because they're faking the phone numbers, so you can't report them to the do not call registry people. And these are inevitably from out of the country and are the Feds really going to bother to try to track this down and prosecute? Even calls from within the country are masked well enough that figuring out the originator is incredibly difficult. And the phone companies Do Not Care about this, they're not losing any money by this happening and any attempt to increase your privacy will only decrease their revenues.

LOL, I'm LAUGHING @ YOU - why?... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: 1st of all, I stop the BIGGEST SPAMMERS of all that infect/slow/track you in advertisers & nullify your 'downmods' by reposting (no limits for me there unlike most ac posters) - you LOSE!

You LOSE as you are REDUCED to the LOWEST of the LOW by your STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous trollings constantly (but always LOSING making ME look GOOD & yourself, stupid, lol).

* Keep CRYIN' BITCH - see subject (it makes me LMAO @ you).

APK

P.S.=> RoTfLmAo... apk

hard of hearing invisible hand

[epine]

Are you seriously suggesting that if it had been an opt-out rather than an opt-in, advertisers would have obeyed it?

You can tell if someone really believes in the free market by how they position the apathy signal.

Apathy and free markets simply don't go together: the underlying principle of a free market is that the invisible hand surveys expressed intent, and allocates resources accordingly. When the expressed intent signal goes mute, the invisible hand becomes a hard of hearing invisible hand, with few of its vaunted virtues.

Apathy is the founding principle of dog-eat-dog commercialism: rubes must be fleeced. Your apathy is my profit opportunity. This is a local greed signal with no redeeming qualities in driving the greater wealth of society. It's a purely small-pie expropriative component of the free-enterprise signal.

And it's really a testament to the power of the invisible hand that it works as well as it does, side by jowl with dog-eat-dog predatory commercialism.

Free market: apathy is a bug; everyone rushes to help clue the apathetic into the wealth-multiplication effect of self-interest, universally and diligently expressed.

Commercialism: apathy is a feature; in fact, you can readily fund a shit IPO that returns no net value to society so long as it corrals enough apathy from the great unwashed masses.

Progressive libertarians regard apathy as a bug.

Just block all cookies

[WCMI92]

Advertisers will never act honorably. Certainly Facebook never will. Just don't give them the information to begin with.

Re:Just block all cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

Just block all cookies

Which isn't going to do a damned thing overall.

Unless you are blocking all third party stuff .. images, CSS, scripts .. you will still be tracked.

Look at your average website when using decent privacy plugins .. many sites have 15-20 embedded parasites, all trying to run scripts, have your browser request a web-bug, load a CSS file, or whatever.

Advertisers will never act honorably. Certainly Facebook never will.

My plugins block entire domains to ensure that Facebook and other assholes don't ever even see traffic from me ... if you think disabling cookies will preserve your privacy, you are woefully ignorant about how tracking works.

The simple act of hitting most pages will still trigger requests to a lot of third party assholes.

You need to stop those from happening. For me, something like HTTP Switchboard is essential, because once I block a domain, it's blocked for all future sites I visit.

The ad companies can kiss my ass, fuck off and die, or go fuck themselves .. bit I'm going to just outright block them entirely.

Re:Just block all cookies

[Darinbob]

Don't limit this to advertisers and Facebook. Any web site or application or company that relies on advertising for revenue or for getting a sliver more profit is also relinquishing their responsibility to protect their customers. Advertising is not harmless.

Re:Just block all cookies

[Darinbob]

True, this is a war. Whenever the consumers develop tools and techniques to defend themselves, the advertisers will come up with new weapons to get their ads through. Ten year old methods of defending yourself no longer do much. Even adblock is somewhat ineffective because everything is happening with scripts these days. The web should never have been allowed to become a platform for applications.

Re:Just block all cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

Just blocking all cookies is not enough anymore. Browser makers are providing more and more ways for you to be tracked. Here's a list:

• Browser Plugins
• Browser Add-On Enumeration
• System Fonts Enumeration
• User-Agent String
• Screen Resolution
• JS.Navigator Parameters
• Supercookies (anything stored in uncommon places)
• Canvas, WebGL, and Audio Fingerprint

Source: https://multilogin.com/browser-fingerprinting-the-surveillance-you-can-t-stop/

Addons ARE being NULLIFIED

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & Google doing in UBlock & other addons (30k item limit = way, Way, WAY SHORT) https://www.bleepingcomputer.c... & Google!

PLUS - As is, addons = easily detected & blocked by webmasters.

* "Ain't happenin'" to the BEST longest lived & FASTER kernelmode more EFFICIENT hosts files that do MORE for FAR LESS, natvely no less (not "Bolt-on-'MoAr'" ILLOGIC-LOGIC loaded w/ security issues (DNS/Antivirus) + slowup vs. hosts SPEEDING YOU UP 2 ways (adblocks & hardcoded fav sites you spend most time @)) vs. INFERIOR inefficient 'souled-out' crippled by DEFAULT addons (AdBlock & UBlock).

APK

P.S.=> It's GOOD to be "The LORD of hosts" (so-to-speak)... apk

My preferred DNT solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ad and script blockers and on certain systems using a custom version of MVPS Hosts file along with a MAC randomizer. Not to mention clearing out any remaining cookies and super cookies after each browsing session.

Yes, they did. For the 0.1%, until MS sabotaged

[raymorris]

Once again Slashdot is predicting the past. And getting mod +5 for incorrectly predicting what "would happen", after it already happened.

There are two different arguments being made, which somewhat contradict each other. This particular argument contradicts well-established facts.

It has been said "almost nobody intentionally turned on DNT, as an opt-out". That's true. That's also probably WHY the major advertisers wrote the spec that way and agreed to follow the spec they wrote, an opt-out spec. Since very few people set DNT, it had essentially no effect on the advertisers' revenue. It was good PR to offer the option, so they did. "Do you really think they would have?" is a silly question - they DID.

When Microsoft violated the spec by making it default to on, THAT affected the advertisers' revenue. They hadn't agreed to honor a default DNT on, so they stopped honoring it. That's what happened, it's not a prediction or a guess.

Knowing what happened, one might say "it's useless either way" - when it was opt-out, nobody set it, when MS went opt-in nobody honored it. That's true as far as it goes. However, robots.txt started out in much the same way. Robots.txt is opt-out, telling Google and other search engines which laws to NOT index. The search engines were fine with that because few sites used it, and often those that did were preventing spidering of infinite numbers of similar pages. Over time, more and more sites starting using robots.txt, and the SEs had already agreed to follow it, before it became well-known.

Had Microsoft left DNT alone and gave it time to become a well-established standard that didn't hurt the advertisers, there would have at least been a CHANCE that usage could slowly grow organically, in the same way the robots.txt works as an opt-out for search engines. It may or may not have become more popular if left alone as an opt-out. We'll never know because Microsoft killed it by violating the standard and setting it as default, making it opt-in. That was never going to work.

Re:failed

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I really wish there was a "gibberish" mod.

I think the option should remain

[Anonymous Coward]

While I recognize that DNT header is not respected by the vast majority of websites, it can't hurt for users to express their preference via their user agent strings. While only a small number of websites will respect it, that may be a non-zero number, and using the DNT user agent string also makes it clear that websites that do track are doing so against a user's express wishes conveyed to the site. It's mostly symbolic, but why not allow people to make the symbolic gesture if they want to?

Re: Can't do 3rd party or DNS tracking vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a MacOS version or an iOS version so your post is off-topic and distracts from the actual topic. Instead of spamming Slashdot, you could actually be porting your software to MacOS.

CPM of interest-based ads is 200% higher

[tepples]

Even if "non-tailored ads are still worth something", they might not be worth enough to pay for a particular site's writing and hosting. Interest-based ads reportedly command three times the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) compared to context-based ads. "An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content" by J. Howard Beales and Jeffrey A. Eisenach states: "the availability of cookies to capture user-specific information is found to increase the observed exchange transaction price by [...] as much as 200 percent (for users with longer-lived cookies)."

Not every publication is a trade publication

[tepples]

That kind of information belongs in trade publications and the like, the ultimate targeted advertising.

I appreciate what you're trying to say: if you want to see computer-related ads, you'd open a Computer Shopper or the like. But not everybody is already aware of the existence of relevant trade publications. And seeing as not every publication is a trade publication, how would the writing and distribution of publications that aren't trade publications be funded? Paywalls?

Re:Not every publication is a trade publication

[drinkypoo]

And seeing as not every publication is a trade publication, how would the writing and distribution of publications that aren't trade publications be funded? Paywalls?

Probably. People are blocking ads, so they're going to have to figure out an alternate funding source regardless. I realize I'm ahead of the curve in this, but if I can't view a site through an ad blocker, I just go somewhere else.

Re:Not every publication is a trade publication

[tepples]

if I can't view a site through an ad blocker, I just go somewhere else.

Occasionally, I've been applying the same policy to featured articles in Slashdot stories. But when I have posted a comment to the story warning other Slashdot users that the article is behind a paywall or incompatible with tracking protection in Firefox or both, such comments have often ended up modded down as "Troll" or the like.

Privacy

[sjbe]

If things go to court it is important to have expressed that you did not want to be tracked

Not at all. The laws regarding privacy in a public forum (like the internet) generally don't care whether or not your wish to be tracked. Absent express laws to the contrary there is a general presumption that you are not entitled to privacy in public outside of some specific circumstances. You setting a flag that you don't wish to be tracked will not provide any legal basis for collecting damages. Furthermore there are many ways to express your desire to not be tracked including using one or more of the many privacy add-ons and filters for exactly that purpose should that somehow become legally relevant.

It is the same as with rape. If the victim does not protest and tell the abuser to stop, then it can be argued it was consensual.

Wow. You have NO idea how consent works do you? Protesting is merely one way to indicate a preference and often it isn't important at all. There also are cases where victims are not expected to be able to protest. (underage, drunk, power imbalance, incapacitated, mentally handicapped, etc) For most crimes there is no requirement to protest for it to be an illegal act.

What "do not track" did was to tell the abuser to stop, so you can now actually claim damages.

If someone is doing something that harms you there is no requirement to tell them to stop. I don't have to tell someone to stop assaulting me or to stop robbing me for it to be illegal. All you have to do is prove that harm resulted or would have been reasonably expected to result.

Re:Privacy

[drinkypoo]

Not at all. The laws regarding privacy in a public forum (like the internet) generally don't care whether or not your wish to be tracked. Absent express laws to the contrary there is a general presumption that you are not entitled to privacy in public outside of some specific circumstances.

That's why DNT was not only worthless as you point out, but an actively bad idea. Without some legislation to back it up, all it ever did was make it easier to fingerprint users who used browsers which did not set the flag by default. With some legislation, it might have accomplished something.

Can't do 3rd party or DNS tracking vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Via APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux/BSD h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p

Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any 1 solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP address most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" slowing u hosts speed u up 2 ways: Adblocks + Hardcode fav. sites u spend most time @ vs. competition w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads slowing u (messagepass 'souled-out' to advertisers easily detected & blocked addons + firewall filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploit!

* ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI 4 Linux/BSD (soon 4 MacOS)!

APK

P.S.=> Protects vs. scripts/trackers (kernelmode faster vs. usermode slower NoScript vs. 3rd party script)/ads/DNS request tracking + redirect poisoned or downed DNS/botnets/malware download/malcript/email malicious payload

For the best hosts file multiplatform

[Anonymous Coward]

APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between chars & download)

APK Hosts File Engine 10++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://hosts-file.net/?s=Down... (DL link @ bottom)

* Soon for MacOS too (I just got a NEW Mac-Mini to port it there)

APK

P.S.=> P.S.=> Again - it's GOOD to be "the LORD of hosts" (so-to-speak) ... apk

Tracking triples ad revenue

[tepples]

I think you're confusing "tracking", with "ads". Those two aren't the same thing.

Advertisers suffer from the same confusion. Publishing consultant Oliver von Wersch put it this way: "the common perception in the market is there's no advertising without tracking. Deactivating tracking in the browser is a de facto ad blocker."[1] This is because the revenue for ads based on tracking is three times that for ads not based on tracking.[2]

[1] "Mobile ad blocking is becoming a bigger threat" by Lucinda Southern
[2] "An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content" by Beales and Eisenach