The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), privacy company Disconnect and a coalition of Internet companies have announced a stronger "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting for Web browsing—a new policy standard that, coupled with privacy software, will better protect users from sites that try to secretly follow and record their Internet activity, and incentivize advertisers and data collection companies to respect a user's choice not to be tracked online.
The new DNT standard is not an ad- or tracker-blocker, but it works in tandem with these technologies.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:19PM
Sending that DNT signal to sebsites seems to help them to "fingerprint" you. You can't avoid sending some information - else how would you get the page you're after? I played with DNT a little bit, over at https://panopticlick.eff.org/ [eff.org] Let me repeat - I played with it, I didn't do an exhaustive test. But, it seemed that sending the DNT signal just made my browser more unique. The majority of people don't know they are tracked, or don't care, and take no measures to prevent it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:33PM
Well, it's a bit out of our control, you know?
We can shoot down third party tracking scripts pretty easily, but we have no idea what's baked into the servers and sites we're connecting to without laborious examination. Apathy can be the right response to impossibility.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Nobuddy on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:35PM
Advertisers doing scummy crap like this, popovers, hover ads, and the like will never stop voluntarily. Until we have a nationwide army of goons hovering over ad execs ready to break kneecaps, they will continue to be sociopathic fuckheads.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:36PM
Thank you for telling us about what's wrong with the previous system. ::rolleyes::
Do you have anything to say about this new project?
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:39PM
There is nothing that a “standard” of any kind will do to stop advertisers and other baddies from fingerprinting you and tracking you.
I skimmed TFA, and while it mentions that if the website you're visiting doesn't indicate it supports DNT the browser should essentially go into über privacy mode (or something), get this: advertisers and other baddies will gleefully report that they're respecting your DNT header and then promptly add the presence of that header to your fingerprint, just as Runaway1956 indicated.
The only answer is AdBlock, NoScript, Ghostery, etc. (Or Nobuddy's goons ready to break kneecaps. I kinda like that idea!)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:18PM
get this: advertisers and other baddies will gleefully report that they're respecting your DNT header and then promptly add the presence of that header to your fingerprint, just as Runaway1956 indicated.
The EFF says you are wrong. From the linked article:
Enforcement
Companies supporting DNT do so voluntarily, but existing law generally requires companies to honor such voluntary commitments. Under such laws, a company that doesn’t do what it says it will do may be engaging in an unfair, deceptive or misleading trade practice. Consumer protection entities like the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general can take action against such deceptive practices.
The difference between this system and the previous DNT implementation is that website compliance was passive and so failure to respect the DNT flag carried no penalty because the website could simply say nothing and then "gleefully" do whatever they wanted. Now they must actively lie, which puts them on the hook for fraud. Any company big enough to be a privacy danger is going to have their legal team screaming at them not to lie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:39PM
And they will never get in trouble for lying, just as copyright thugs never get in trouble for misusing the unconstitutional garbage known as the DMCA.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:15PM
> And they will never get in trouble for lying,
Because the FTC never enforces [ftc.gov] privacy [pcworld.com] regulations. [cnn.com] Never [forbes.com] ever [ftc.gov] happens. [techtimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:44AM
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:03PM
Ah, apparently I skimmed too quickly! I stand corrected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:28PM
This is the previous system. This is merely a voluntary code of conduct that people can use to promise that they're using the previous system in a client-friendly way.