Items tagged with do not track
Have you ever felt like you're being followed? Excuse us for feeding into your paranoia, but you are being tracked. It happens each and every time you surf the web, and it's going to keep happening, even if you've enabled that feel-good "Do Not Track" setting in your browser that most websites and online services ignore. They ignore it because they can, and the Federal Communications Commission isn't stepping in to help. Consumer Watchdog just tried forcing the FCC's hand by petitioning the government agency to "initiate a rulemaking proceeding requiring 'edge providers (like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, and LinkedIn) to honor 'Do Not Track' requests from consumers," but the attempt...
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Microsoft is giving Internet Explorer and Project Spartan browser users a heads up that in future releases, the Do Not Track feature will no longer be enabled by default. On the surface (no pun intended), Microsoft's reasoning for the change is that enabling the privacy feature by default only encourages websites to ignore the setting and use tracking cookies anyway.It's not such an odd leap of logic, and it's one that the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) agrees with. As WC3 explains, sending a signal to disable tracking "MUST reflect the user's preference, not the choice of some vendor, institution, site, or network-imposed mechanism outside the user's control." So when no user choice exists...
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News is out today of a survey from video advertising platform Ebuzzing claiming that it would cost an average of E140 per year per UK citizen to pay for an ad-free Internet and that the majority of users (98% of them, in fact) would never, ever be willing to pay such fees. I'm not surprised by results like this -- if someone asked me "Would you pay $185 a year to avoid pop-up ads?" my first thought would be "No, I'd install Ad Block" or "No, I'd just avoid the websites that show obnoxious ads I don't want to see." According to Ebuzzing's results, that's precisely what most of its respondents do. There is, however, a more interesting facet to this question. What would I pay to not be tracked online?...
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Yahoo is proud as a peacock to point out that it was an early adopter of Do Not Track, but at the same time, the company isn't willing to let that little tidbit prevent it from suddenly abandoning the privacy initiative by ignoring DNT requests. In case you're wondering why Yahoo changed its mind, the company's excuse boils down to, 'Meh, why bother?' We're paraphrasing, of course. "As of today, web browser Do Not Track settings will no longer be enabled on Yahoo. As the first major tech company to implement Do Not Track, we've been at the heart of conversations surrounding how to develop the most user-friendly standard. However, we have yet to see a single standard emerge that is effective,...
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As we discussed last month, Mozilla postponed the introduction of automatic third-party cookie blocking in its Firefox Web browser, citing the obvious: it was too hasty in its decision. Well, that hastiness appears to have worn off, as now, the company has plans to rollout the do not track change to Firefox in the months ahead (exactly how many months isn't noted). You might imagine that not everyone is happy about this move, and of them all, the vocal majority are advertisers. Advertisers can make use of cookies to track where the user visits in order to deliver more relevant advertising. Have you ever looked up a product at Amazon and then saw an ad for it on another site? Cookies are to thank....
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An upcoming version of Google's Chrome browser will finally offer support for Do Not Track (DNT) technology, which is a privacy measure that, in theory, prevents websites from dropping advertising cookies into the browser. It's a feature that's already available in Firefox and Internet Explorer, and by the end of the year, Google says Chrome will have it, too. "We undertook to honor an agreement on DNT that the industry reached with the White House early this year," a Google spokesman told InformationWeek in an email. "To that end we're making this setting visible in our Chromium developer channel, so that it will be available in upcoming versions of Chrome by year's end." Google doesn't yet...
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Last month, Microsoft dropped a bombshell on advertisers -- its Internet Explorer 10 that ships with Windows 8 would ship with its "Do Not Track" setting enabled. Users would have to opt out of DNT by manually changing this setting if they wanted websites to track them. The DNT standard is still being debated, and compliance with it is voluntary, but even so, Microsoft's announcement made a lot of advertisers unhappy. This was reflected in changes the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) announced a few weeks later, when it stated that in order to be considered "in compliance" with DNT, all browsers must not set a DNT preference without the user's explicit consent. This perversely means Microsoft...
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The state of California is currently considering a bill (SB761) that, if passed in its current form, would require websites to ask visitors for permission before tracking them via cookies. While there are already apps and add-ons that allow web surfers to manually control what cookies they accept or refuse, the new bill would require companies to explicitly ask visitors if they wanted to be tracked. Google and Facebook have jointly sent a letter to the government claiming that passage of the bill would have disastrous consequences. The relevant text is as follows: [The bill] would require a... person or entity doing business in the state of California that collects, uses, or stores online data...
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Consumer advocates, veteran websurfers, and the just plain paranoid love the idea of a "Do Not Track" list that would make it impossible for advertisers to track where you go on the web and tailor advertising to your surfing habits. The problem is, those same users hate paying for content, and like having free, high-quality ad-supported webpages to look at. The law of unintended consequences could very well rear its ugly head if the tracking of your likes and dislikes is disallowed: an explosion in the amount of advertising needed to be shown to each websurfer to pay for the content they're looking at. The reason for the potential ad increase is related to a key difference between telemarketing...
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