Do Not Track has always been in a pretty weird place. I think one of the things that really screwed the idea up was that Microsoft decided to enable it by default in Internet Explorer 10 (and then...
Do Not Track has always been in a pretty weird place. I think one of the things that really screwed the idea up was that Microsoft decided to enable it by default in Internet Explorer 10 (and then eventually stopped). But by making it the default, it made it so much easier for companies/sites to justify ignoring it, since it was something that the user hadn't even intentionally enabled. Combined with the fact that (as the article describes) there weren't even any actual standards or enforcement for what sites were supposed to do in response to the signal, there was just no real motivation for anyone to pay attention to it.
It's even weirder in some ways because a California privacy law requires that sites state how they respond to the Do Not Track signal, which has resulted in sites including weird little clauses like this one that I have in Tildes's privacy policy:
Do Not Track signal
Tildes does not alter its behavior based on whether your browser sends a Do Not Track (DNT) header or not.
The problem is advertisers and tech companies do not want what users want. If you asked pretty much any user "Would you like to be tracked?" They would pretty much all say no. But advertisers want...
The problem is advertisers and tech companies do not want what users want. If you asked pretty much any user "Would you like to be tracked?" They would pretty much all say no. But advertisers want to track anyway and they aren't going to shut their businesses up so they just ignore what the users want.
Agreed, the onus is on us to minimize our own trackability. Specifically, for browser and plugin vendors to provide defensive technologies, and for users to understand and know how to employ them.
Agreed, the onus is on us to minimize our own trackability. Specifically, for browser and plugin vendors to provide defensive technologies, and for users to understand and know how to employ them.
2018 Whatever sympathy I might have had pretty much evaporated with that statement, if you prove yourself an unreliable negotiator who ultimately just stalls until a compromise is no longer...
“Do Not Track could have succeeded only if there had been some incentive for the ad tech industry to reach a consensus with privacy advocates and other stakeholders—some reason why a failure to reach a negotiated agreement would be a worse outcome for the industry,” said Arvind Narayanan, a professor at Princeton University who was one of the technologists at the table. “Around 2011, the threat of federal legislation brought them to the negotiating table. But gradually, that threat disappeared. The prolonged negotiations, in fact, proved useful to the industry to create the illusion of a voluntary self-regulatory process, seemingly preempting the need for regulation.”
2018
Dennis Buchheim, a senior vice president at online advertising group IAB’s Tech Lab, said in a statement that DNT, as designed, was too blunt an instrument and didn’t allow users to “exempt their trusted sites, effectively limiting users to all-or-nothing.” He calls Apple’s and Mozilla’s new anti-tracking offerings “a poor but logical evolution of the intentions of DNT” and hopes for a more “collaborative approach” that involves users telling sites one-by-one what tracking they’re willing to allow.
Whatever sympathy I might have had pretty much evaporated with that statement, if you prove yourself an unreliable negotiator who ultimately just stalls until a compromise is no longer possible then you do not get to complain that you're no longer being involved in the process.
Honestly running NoScript is about the only way to avoid being tracked. It's not a perfect solution, but it can definitely help reduce your tracking surface area.
Honestly running NoScript is about the only way to avoid being tracked. It's not a perfect solution, but it can definitely help reduce your tracking surface area.
VPN + uBlock Origin + uMatrix for me The new NoScript UI on Firefox is absolutely horrible and looks cartoonish with its big dumb icons. uMatrix is clean, sleek, simple and just as effective.
VPN + uBlock Origin + uMatrix for me
The new NoScript UI on Firefox is absolutely horrible and looks cartoonish with its big dumb icons. uMatrix is clean, sleek, simple and just as effective.
Do you need uBlock Origin alongside uMatrix? I've heard that some websites host ads as 1st party, but I've never encountered such website in the wild. I love uMatrix because of the control it...
Do you need uBlock Origin alongside uMatrix? I've heard that some websites host ads as 1st party, but I've never encountered such website in the wild.
I love uMatrix because of the control it gives me and being much lighter replacement for adblockers - which considerably slowed down my 8 years old laptop.
No, you don't really need both, but I like still having uBlock because it does HTML element removal well, which uMatrix doesn't. uMatrix stops ad scripts from loading but that often still leaves...
No, you don't really need both, but I like still having uBlock because it does HTML element removal well, which uMatrix doesn't. uMatrix stops ad scripts from loading but that often still leaves big blank spots on sites where their ads were supposed to be, but with uBlock I can hide those now blank ad-related HTML elements and have a more seamless ad-free experience.
edit: @apoctr also brought up a really good point too. By having both you don't need to tinker quite so much with whitelisting scripts since uBlock can automatically take care of any ad related ones that slip through your uMatrix filter.
Do Not Track has always been in a pretty weird place. I think one of the things that really screwed the idea up was that Microsoft decided to enable it by default in Internet Explorer 10 (and then eventually stopped). But by making it the default, it made it so much easier for companies/sites to justify ignoring it, since it was something that the user hadn't even intentionally enabled. Combined with the fact that (as the article describes) there weren't even any actual standards or enforcement for what sites were supposed to do in response to the signal, there was just no real motivation for anyone to pay attention to it.
It's even weirder in some ways because a California privacy law requires that sites state how they respond to the Do Not Track signal, which has resulted in sites including weird little clauses like this one that I have in Tildes's privacy policy:
The problem is advertisers and tech companies do not want what users want. If you asked pretty much any user "Would you like to be tracked?" They would pretty much all say no. But advertisers want to track anyway and they aren't going to shut their businesses up so they just ignore what the users want.
Agreed, the onus is on us to minimize our own trackability. Specifically, for browser and plugin vendors to provide defensive technologies, and for users to understand and know how to employ them.
2018
Whatever sympathy I might have had pretty much evaporated with that statement, if you prove yourself an unreliable negotiator who ultimately just stalls until a compromise is no longer possible then you do not get to complain that you're no longer being involved in the process.
Honestly running NoScript is about the only way to avoid being tracked. It's not a perfect solution, but it can definitely help reduce your tracking surface area.
VPN + uBlock Origin + uMatrix for me
The new NoScript UI on Firefox is absolutely horrible and looks cartoonish with its big dumb icons. uMatrix is clean, sleek, simple and just as effective.
Do you need uBlock Origin alongside uMatrix? I've heard that some websites host ads as 1st party, but I've never encountered such website in the wild.
I love uMatrix because of the control it gives me and being much lighter replacement for adblockers - which considerably slowed down my 8 years old laptop.
No, you don't really need both, but I like still having uBlock because it does HTML element removal well, which uMatrix doesn't. uMatrix stops ad scripts from loading but that often still leaves big blank spots on sites where their ads were supposed to be, but with uBlock I can hide those now blank ad-related HTML elements and have a more seamless ad-free experience.
edit: @apoctr also brought up a really good point too. By having both you don't need to tinker quite so much with whitelisting scripts since uBlock can automatically take care of any ad related ones that slip through your uMatrix filter.
Umatrix doesn't remember my settings for some websites, Its super annoying
Didn't know you had to save them. I guess that's the usability aspect of why that is not widespread lol
I agree, I might check out how it works I. Detail and see if I can contribute in a way. I am super sick of all the ads