SoylentNews

When reading my local newspaper online this morning, I noticed for the first time a small message, lower-left of the window, "Opt-Out Signal Honored". A little quick searching turned up GPC, Global Privacy Control https://globalprivacycontrol.org/ [globalprivacycontrol.org]

The GPC signal is intended to communicate a Do Not Sell or Share request under the California Consumer Privacy Act, and similar state privacy laws that allow users to opt out of data sales or the use of their data for cross-context targeted advertising. Under the GDPR, the intent of the GPC signal is to convey a general request that data controllers limit the sale or sharing of the user’s personal data to other data controllers (GDPR Articles 7 & 21). The GPC may also invoke other compatible rights in other jurisdictions.

A little more digging shows that SN covered this in late 2020 (five+ years ago), https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/10/08/0119236 [soylentnews.org] but at that time it was in the FSF Privacy Badger--which I was already using back then.

So my first thought is that all of a sudden my state (not California) has turned on a similar rule. But then, my partner's Win11 PC (no Privacy Badger) gave the same message on a consumer company catalog page (from yet a third state)--so maybe the message is coming from somewhere else? We do both use Firefox, but I'm on ESR (for Win7) and they are on the main track.

Why did the message start to appear today? Does GPC actually work? Any relation to the European GDPR?

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