Mozilla Proposes 'Do Not Track' HTTP Header 244
MozTrack writes "The emergence of data mining by third party advertisers has caused a national debate from privacy experts, lawmakers and browser supporters. Mozilla's Firefox, a popular browser company, has proposed a new feature that will prevent people's personal information from getting mined and sold for advertising. The feature would allow users to set a browser preference that will broadcast their desire to opt-out of third party, advertising-based tracking. It would do this via a 'Do Not Track' HTTP header with every click or page view in Firefox."
Good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that sites would be justified (imo) to then not offer you service based on this.
“We support this site with ad revenue. Tracking is part of that. No Tracking, no service”.
This is fine really. People aren’t entitled to web content. In many cases your privacy is what you are trading for it, and you should be made aware of this and have the option to decline. This kind of header (and possibly others like it) would let you specify in what you are ok with, and let a site then decide whether it’s enough to grant you access.
The problem is that people don’t like this... they want the privacy _and_ the content.. so people would probably just go back to using ad-blockers and cookie deleters as soon as they start getting rejected access messages.
Of course the opposite could happen as well. Web traffic could plummet as everyone enables the feature.. causing a site owner to re-think whether web tracking makes sense for them.
Personally I don’t mind being tracked. Somewhere out there, someone has a very detailed profile of what makes me tick.. and really it’s not doing me much harm that I can see. I read an article about raising my new pet dog and I every other ad I see for the next 2 weeks is about obedience training.. creepy but doesn’t hurt me. This is a personal decision however, and I think people do have the right to be paranoid about their data and should have the option to opt out.
Great idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
This was my initial response. Ad revenue is what makes the interest free (beer and speech). The site producers can pay little/no out of pocket expense to pay for hosting due to ad revenue and since they're not requiring SPECIFIC sponsorship, they do not have to follow the whims of their sponsors with their content.
I want my privacy but fully understand the value of advertising for the internet I love. So, I allow tracking... until I turn off my browser... when all my cookies and temp files are wiped. That's my happy medium. I allow advertisers to know that in the early morning, my browser surfs slashdot, google news, and whatever articles within. However, when I close my browser, that's the end of "string" of consecutive data for them. I'll allow the tracking of sessions, personally, but not me in my entirety.
Re:Great idea but not likely to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention that it can be used to prevent access to sites. I've been on sites that block access if you use Adblock or NoScript. Not sure how they recognize it(because I never tried to look), but they do
Objectively, if I'm funding my site with advertising and you block it, why should you be allowed to access my content?
Re:Right... (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as people here on Slashdot like to complain that this flag would do no good, and point to the 'evil bit' proposal as a joke, they seem to forget the robots.txt that seems to have been pretty darn effective. Specifically telling sites that you do not agree to be tracked sets a non-legal boundary to start a discussion. Illegal is not the same as evil. It is perfectly acceptable to avoid businesses because of evil behavior. Right now, you can't really get a consensus on tracking being evil. Most people would be able to agree that tracking someone when they explicitly requested not to be tracked is evil. While being directly and demonstrably linked to a specific evil act might not matter to the small website, bigger sites might find it less appealing. If, and this is a big 'if', ad revenue drops more from bad publicity for tracking than it does from using non-tracking advertising, larger sites might choose to use the non-tracking version.
There seems to be a weird myth on the internet that one must track to advertise, even though TV, magazines, billboards, etc, etc... have been advertising for generations without tracking. Somehow, even people that should know better have fallen for the "it's totally different because it's ON A COMPUTER" when it comes to ads.
Re:Great idea but not likely to happen (Score:2, Interesting)
That is a valid point, but isn't any more objective than the OP.
Though if they refuse to click on any ads, then why would it matter if you show it to them? Aren't all ads based upon the click, and not just the view these days?
Personally, I don't see the problem with either view as long as it is stated up front (with a page that says you must turn off adblock to see this content, or such). I skip those sites as not worth my time, but I don't begrudge them their choice.
Re:Great idea but not likely to happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Along the same lines, this would probably make the issue worse.
Just one more point of information for tracking. See: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ for how trackable you are. What they really need is a "whitewash" extension or setting by Mozilla that gives everyone the same settings for user agent, plugins, headers, etc. If everyone appears the same, no one is unique.