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posted by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the please-don't-track-us dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:19PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:19PM (#218007) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:33PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:33PM (#218017) Journal

    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

    by Nobuddy (1626) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:35PM (#218018)

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:36PM (#218019)

    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

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:39PM (#218057) Journal

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:18PM (#218081)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:39PM (#218097)

          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

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:15PM (#218134)

            > 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

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:44AM (#218313)
            They aren't misusing the DMCA. They bought and paid for the law they wanted, and the law is extremely slanted as a result. Redress for fraudulent takedown requests under the DMCA requires you and/or the site owner to actively sue the parties who made it, and only entitles you to damages and attorney's fees. Wordpress tried to do that once and the courts ruled in their favour, but were unable to track the rascals who did it and so didn't get their damages. Now, if the DMCA actually said that fraudulent takedown requests were a felony with major fines or prison time attached to it, then we'd see everyone being real careful about making such takedown requests, none of this automated DMCA takedown BS we see today. But that's not how the copyright thugs wanted it, so that wasn't the law they bought, and Congress never bloody cared if it meant that it would give what amounts to almost the power to censor at will anything they don't like, in violation of the Constitution they swear to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
        • (Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:03PM

          by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:03PM (#218197) Journal

          Ah, apparently I skimmed too quickly! I stand corrected.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:28PM (#218144)

      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.