Advertisers Never Intended To Honor DNT 308
First time accepted submitter oldlurker writes "After much discussion where many hoped a voluntary Do Not Track standard was agreed with advertisers, it turns out the advertisers already had a very different interpretation than most of us on how to practice it: 'Two big associations, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Digital Advertising Alliance, represent 90% of advertisers. Downey says those big groups have devised their own interpretation of Do Not Track. When the servers controlled by those big companies encounter a DNT=1 header, says Downey, "They have said they will stop serving targeted ads but will still collect and store and monetize data."'"
Missing the Point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't that missing the entire point?
Maybe, but not collecting and monetising the data is missing the point of trying to make money, and we can't have that now can we?!
They don't seem too different to the music industry: they can't quite grasp that pissing people off may be a bad way to try making money out of them, and if you try to avoid their countermeasures you're obviously someone who wants something for nothing and a terrible person.
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should they honour it? It's the browser which is voluntarily giving out identifiable data! Sort your browser out if you don't want to be tracked.
DNT is the same as saying passwords aren't required, because there's a "do not impersonate me" standard.
Re: (Score:3)
Why should they honour it?
Because it respects the social compact between businesses and the citizens they serve.
Instead, we have a prisoners dilemma where one prisoner has nothing to lose *and* can tweak the rules if they bribe^W lobby the rule makers.
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Social compact" - what pretentious bollocks.
Your browser is leaking your info - fix that. Trying to stop people taking advantage is so utterly the wrong approach here, its the same as any security related issue - make your end as secure as you possibly can, because the world is a big wide open and very bad place. You cannot control the other end, but you can control what you are leaking.
Also, pathetic hacks like DNT do not work even when backed with legal status - the internet is not one jurisdiction, but your browser certainly is... fix your data leakage at the source, not at the receiving end.
Re: (Score:2)
Then here's the question:
What measures should we take to stop the browser from leaking our information? Is there any way to do so without losing functionality, such as saved sessions?
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop accepting cookies from anyone except the first origin website for a start - advertisers use their own cookies to track you across sites, using site specific cookies makes tracking you across sites extremely hard. Session cookies aren't an issue - if you are using my website, you don't have any leg to stand on when asking me to not track your usage of my website.
Remove a lot of information from the user agent string. Take it back to browser name, major number, minor number.
Stop allowing plug ins etc to add user agent detail or request header lines.
Treat third party images the same way as cookies.
Rigidly enforce plugin security, so things like Flash cannot maintain cookies etc outside of the browsers control.
Etc etc etc.
There are plenty of things that the browsers need to fess up and fix before DNT can be considered to not be a joke - *asking* third parties not to do "X" when you are leaking that data voluntarily to them each time you request an object is just stupid.
If this was anything else, the onus would be on the one leaking the information - if your medical records were being leaked through system insecurity then the one being decried here on Slashdot would be the source of the leak, not the recipient! Why is this any different?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you missed my biggie: deinstall flash.
if I need a YT video, I run 'youtube-dl'. not only do I get selectivity in what flash gets run on my system but I get to keep a copy of the video in case I want it, later. and of course, I get no 'buffering' bullshit.
I have not found a single reason to have flash installed in a browser. but I admit I'm very willing to go without the latest 'linked video' from this or that idiot. if the video is not something I can get spam-free, I do without.
not having flash install
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I didn't miss your biggie, I included a better solution in "rigidly enforce plugin security" - currently, on most browsers its a case of "hey, a plugin, here, have as much access as you like!" and that's stupid.
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depends. if the session is your function, you need to know, that part of the function is, that you will be recognized on visits later on. this has positive and negative aspects, which cannot be split, independent of the way how you realize the session (i.e. blocking cookies and having sessionid in the url won't help you with being tracked)
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Interesting)
And the first thing that the Mozilla Devs need to do is delete the Unique ID for Safe Browsing from the firefox code base as it's a cookie that can't be deleted. For those using Firefox and it's derivitives, change the Safe Browsing ID to "0" and help Poisson Googles Data. What really bothers me about this issue is that even when "In Private" browsing is enabled, this unique ID is being passed to Google, in direct violation of my intentions when entering "In Private" mode. This is just one more reason I rarely use Firefox. Opera has a similar feature and I suspect it does the same. Sorry but Safe Browsing needs to be completely anonymous instead of tracking us like it does now.
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help Poisson Googles Data
That sounds fishy to me.
Re: (Score:3)
Because, as stated by Google, it isn't.
I will use Google and get / give a degraded service in Privacy mode by giving them less information, possibly getting more ads from Google and a less-targeted response.
With Google, the idea (the implicit "contract") was that your data was available and used by Google for targetted advertising, but not passed to third parties. I don't mind Google knowing of my fondness for Twinkies, and my purchasing of them, but I _do_ mind if my health insurer knows, for example.
Re: (Score:2)
Point out a single useful web search engine who's business model doesn't depend on that. Big surprise, you can't as there isn't one.
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your browser is leaking your info - fix that.
Good idea.
Trying to stop people taking advantage is so utterly the wrong approach here, its the same as any security related issue - make your end as secure as you possibly can, because the world is a big wide open and very bad place. You cannot control the other end, but you can control what you are leaking.
Of course you can, and should pass laws and attempt to control the other end as best you can. What planet do you come from?
Because down here, we take a two pronged approach to problems like this... to deal with home invasions we invented walls and doors and locks and keys and motion sensors and alarms, and so on. You want to be secure in your home, secure it.
But we didn't stop there, we also made home invasions illegal, tresspassing, break and enter, and so on.
Why do you advocate only doing half when it comes to the internet?
pathetic hacks like DNT do not work even when backed with legal status - the internet is not one jurisdiction,
So, many of the big advertising firms are based out of this country, or have a physical presence in the country, and many more operate out of countries we have treaties with. Sure that doesn't reach absolutely everyone out there, but the reach is pretty decent. Any particular reason we shouldn't bother at all?
Re: (Score:2)
Browsers work fine, their ethics don't.
Hit it with a hammer if it doesn't work.
Overkill, it works everytime.
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The point here is "voluntary". If it was voluntary to display the number plate, you should sort your car out if you don't want it to display yours, and I should be allowed to record and track whatever I wanted to.
Exactly! (Score:2)
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that missing the entire point? Or is the do-not-track specification one of those Orwellian-titled things whereby the net effect is exactly the opposite of the name?
No it's just that advertisers are a bunch of assholes who think that free speech = unfettered right to harass everyone even when they're sleeping, eating, screwing, working or taking a dump.
It's about time people woke up and realised that there should be limits to what _both_ companies and governments aught to be able to do.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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Yes, privacy is when you block every attempt to identify you, track you, or send you any information you don't want.
Spite is when you start sending them hate mail, having their executives tailed every minute of the day, or generally treat them the same way they normally treat us.
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If you're browsing the web while you're sleeping and screwing, you're doing it wrong.
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That's right. It's very difficult to concentrate on the messages our internet overlords are trying to get us to read if we waste time sleeping and screwing. Back to your browser, citizen!
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It's about time people woke up and realised that there should be limits to what _both_ companies and governments aught to be able to do.
So... who's going to enforce the limits on companies?
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
In any other civilised nation, the government. But of course in America, that'll never happen
Re: (Score:2)
So... who's going to enforce the limits on companies?
citizens united?
(ok, I make bad joke.)
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you see no difference between an elected administration and a private entity with no democratic oversight?
At the end of the day, the reason why companies are let doing perfectly dickish things in the US is people believe that the government would be worse. And so vote for people who promise they'll let companies be dicks.
The stupid, it hurts.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that missing the entire point?
Err, yeah, and that's why the headline is "Advertisers Never Intended To Honor DNT."
Re:Missing the Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think I ever understood the point in the first place.
A polite request to please not track you, made to an industry that exists solely to make money out of tracking people?
Yeah, that was going to work...
The explanation of DNT (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, DNT is predicated on the idea that advertisers will actually respect user wishes, because otherwise users will respond by blocking ads. The point of this article is that advertisers have shown that they do not respect user wishes; the logical conclusion should be that browsers start including things like ABP by default, until advertisers start respecting DNT again (but that won't happen, so we'll just make ad blocking a standard browser feature). Browser makers must include ad blocking or else DNT will truly be pointless; users, by and large, will not install ad blocking extensions on their own.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, I have though since day 1 that adding a flag to the browser was at best a waste of effort and bandwidth (albeit very very small amounts of bandwidth) I never for one second thought that a polite request would make any difference what so ever.
I smell conflict on the horizon (Score:2)
We're a couple decades into the general public into this inter-tube-network-doohickey. /., gimme a beer would'ja?...
It's been my observation that when advertisers get too smug, they lose their ass to mass protest and activism.
Some group with an opposing idea of privacy to the corporate norm will probably be glad to trade DNT for DOS.
All I have to do is sit back and keep readin'
More elaborate schemes? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole argument for DNT is that advertisers will be compelled to follow it, because if they do not do so then users will start blocking ads. Advertisers are not respecting DNT, so we have to deploy ad blockers now, or else DNT was truly pointless.
Re:More elaborate schemes? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't feel that ABP is enough anymore. I started using Ghostery and it blocks a lot of things that ABP lets through.
Yes ABP is great for blocking ads, but Ghostery will block the tracking cookies ABP doesn't care about. A plus for Ghostery is it remove all of the +1, Facebook, and Twitter links from around the web that I could care less about.
Re:More elaborate schemes? (Score:5, Informative)
ABP can do that aswell if you subscribe to the Anti-Social filter. Scroll to the very bottom of this page: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions [adblockplus.org]. It's under Miscellaneous.
Re:More elaborate schemes? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it would be more harmful to those people junking up the web if we made a browser extension that clicked on every +1, like, and follow button you surf past.
Re: (Score:3)
Then the data miners could just filter it out.
It's one thing to waste bandwidth, but polluting their data is worth so much more.
Re:More elaborate schemes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
But Ad-Block can replace all the ads with pictures of kittens. Does your precious Ghostery do this?
Re:More elaborate schemes? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
But I'm not an ignoramus. In fact, I understand perfectly well that idioms often don't mean what their constituent parts mean. I also understand that language isn't about making statements that are rigorous according to formal logic. Instead, we have things like tone, connotation, emphasis and so on.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, the original idiom was "couldn't care less", but the "not" has been dropped for any of a variety of proposed reasons, none of them having to do with abject stupidity (the fact that a great number of well-read and highly-educated people also say "could care less" when not being careful in their speech should tell you as much). You know, it's that sort of moralizing about people's character based solely on some technicality of how they speak that I find to be disgustingly judgmental and stupid, to boot.
Re: (Score:3)
For what it's worth, "could care less" has a meaning that is well-known and unambiguous. Nobody would hear "could care less" and think that the speaker cared by some amount (according to the phrase's technical meaning). Any time a pedant comes along to call someone out on their usage, they never first ask "did you mean that you did care, or did you mean that you didn't?" No, the meaning is already clear: the speaker/writer did not care at all.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
I am from Germany, and the first couple times I read "could care less" I was quite conf
Re: (Score:3)
The point of DNT was to have a formal way to request no tracking, which is useless by itself, but is a necessary tool to implement various consumer privacy laws, such as the EU-wide "cookie directive". It means that, if some advertiser can be shown to not respect your choice to not be tracked, you can take them to court. So it's a legal tool, not a technical tool.
So in other words... (Score:3, Informative)
...they will still track.
This is where someone will say... (Score:5, Informative)
What ads? I use noscript and adblock.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Don't forget Ghostery.
Re:This is where someone will say... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget Ghostery.
Indeed, don't forget to avoid it. it is a product of the advertising industry itself, specifically Evidon.
Don't you think they love the metrics it provides about the types of ads and beacons that people are choosing to block?
Let's see what Ghostery's maker says [evidon.com]:
That technology includes Ghostery, Evidon’s browser tool that reports on data collection across 26 million websites and informs the company’s business control solutions.
Re:This is where someone will say... (Score:5, Informative)
You have to volunteer that data by activating their ghostrank option. There was a AMA on reddit where the devs have said that you can unpack the archive and examine the data yourselves if you don't trust them. Apparently all it sends back to them is what advertisers ghostery saw.
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Re: (Score:2)
I use the mvps.org HOSTS file as well, and have been very happy with it. Pretty much all of the crap out there now lives at 127.0.0.1.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm doing similar right now, but instead of a hosts file I set up a DNS server to do it for me, that way I can have every one of my devices get the same one without having to keep hosts updated on more than one machine. I also don't send it to 127.0.0.1, I direct it instead to my own server which serves up a blank page (eliminates the ugly error messages in what would be the ad boxes)
Re:This is where someone will say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is where someone will say... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would even go back to viewing ads as long as they are not obnoxious
As far as I am concerned, the only advertisements that are not obnoxious are the ones that I specifically ask for. When do I specifically ask for advertising? When I search for products on Amazon, when I go to Craigslist, when I use Google Shopping to compare prices, etc. It is no surprise that those things are so overwhelmingly successful (both in terms of money and in terms of utilization): there is no incentive for anyone to block them, because they are giving people something useful and something people want.
The reason advertisers have such a bizarre interpretation of do-not-track is that they know they cannot make any money by respecting people. That's why I use ABP and NoScript: advertisers do not respect me, so I will not let them consume my screen space, CPU cycles or bandwidth.
As for the poor websites that claim they will go under without advertisers...well, maybe they should stand up for their users and say, "No, obnoxious, disrespectful advertising is not allowed on this website." What happened to just showing me a picture that says, "This product is better than the rest!" and leaving it at that?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is where someone will say... (Score:5, Insightful)
"You are STEALING content! How do the content creators get paid?!?"
Content creators do not have a right to have their business model work out. Besides, most ads pay per click, not per view these days (though both kinds still exist).
There are many other business models. An online game of mine (BattleMaster [battlemaster.org]) runs entirely on donations, for example. I'm very proud of having been able to run this game for 12 years now, and there has never been a single banner or pop-up ad on the site. Not in the game, not in the wiki, not in the forum.
Does it allow me to quit my day job? Nope. Does it pay for its own bills (hosting, etc.)? Absolutely.
There are Freemium models, there are subscription models like The Onion [theonion.com] where you get a few free articles and then they ask you to subscribe. And, of course, there is the old "You want something? Pay up and you get it." system. You know, the one that mankind has been using for a few thousand years?
The Internet has been and still is experimenting with various ways of making money. If yours doesn't work out, stop whining and start taking the possibility into consideration that your business model is flawed.
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Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't the point... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wasn't the whole point of this to encourage advertisers to not track
Yes, that is the idea. However, DNT is entirely voluntary. And if you really thought that advertisers were going to honor DNT, then you are extremely stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly what theory would you (or your lawyer) use in court? That by sending an HTTP request with a "Give-Me-Money: $1000" line, and then not giving you $1000, they violated a court-enforceable contract?
The data that you send to a web server is not your property; without actual laws that limit the recording and sharing of personally identifiable data -- for example, Europe's data privacy laws -- or an actual contract between you and the web site's provider, you have no legally reasonable expectation that a
Re: (Score:2)
As I said, the bits you send to the web server are not your property. You seem to think that sending a Do-Not-Track header line gives you some claim about what the web server (and its owner(s) and their partners) can do with their property. That is why I made the exaggerated analogy to a Give-Me-Money header.
The argument for DNT (Score:2)
Now we see that advertisers are not respecting DNT, so now we should get back to making sure everyone installs ABP.
Please don't eat me (Score:5, Insightful)
"Please don't eat me, brother Wolf!" cried the Rabbit. "Aw, all right." said the Wolf, rolling his eyes. "I'll just trade you to brother Fox for some hens. Is that ok with you?"
Semantics (Score:5, Informative)
It's do not track not cover up track. I think these fellas need a course in remedial grammar.
There are times I do want, say, Google to keep my data, and I don't care if they share it -- like if I search for Minecraft stuffs, I want MC stuff to appear on my search. Or if I search a topic and I'd rather be swayed towards more reliable sources that I would frequent rather than like, "HOMEOPATHY MAGIC QUANTUM JUICE PANACEA MAKE MONEY FROM HOME."
For everthing else, there's Duck Duck Go [duckduckgo.com]
That's OK (Score:4, Interesting)
I have my browsers not respect their wishes on page composition and ad presentation, so I don't really expect them to respect my do-not-track header either. Their domains would first have to make it past my DNS blackhole anyway.
Where can I buy it... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where can I buy it... (Score:4, Funny)
Home Depot, check your local area.
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why adblock exists (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
and that is why i use and will continue to use adblock. the advertisers have given me no reason to trust them.
Moreover, I don't create exceptions. If you're part of an ad network, I want no part of that. If you manage to create interesting content which is also an advertisement, I will see it. If you can't manage that, and just want to tape some ads onto the side, you have already failed to face the future. Ad networks have been used to spread too much malware already.
In Other Words (Score:2)
Duh.... (Score:3)
From the moment I saw the Do not Track idea come up, I was telling people that advertisers will not car and not honor it. the ONLY way you can set your own do not track is by using adblockers and other tools to strip out their crud. IF they wont honor your do not track, you no longer have to honor seeing their ad's. The only thing they can track by now is your IP address and the browser string if you install all the privacy plugins for firefox or Chrome. it strips their bugs, cookies, etc... and I am waiting for someone to start randomizing the browser string to further make their tracking harder.
Duh (Score:2)
>"Advertisers Never Intended To Honor DNT"
Um.... Duh???
Did anyone really expect anything else?
Color me astonished! (Score:4, Funny)
Advertisers are ignoring what the user wants and using your data any way they see fit just because they can?
Know what else they're tracking and selling to other advertisers? Your do-not-track setting.
DNT == (Score:2)
Most interesting and profitable to track because they don't want to be tracked.
It's like putting a kid in front of a big red button and saying "DON'T TOUCH THAT BIG RED BUTTON". Seriously, did anyone expect anything less?
Unless tracking is made *impossible*... (Score:2)
The scum (advertisers, government agencies, et. al.) will continue to use it. Three cheers for ghostery.com.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup I use Ghostery and recommend it all the time. DNT+ is also a good tool. Right now there's too much tracking going on even though I have "Do Not Track" set on Firefox. I'm now just waiting for it on Chrome.
Gentlemen, (Score:2)
Gentlemen, start your ad blockers.
I'm very carefull with those as I'd like to keep my free ad-financed sites, but this is a short-cut to my blacklist.
As is content-obscuring ads, any kind of noise and excessive blinking.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm very carefull with those as I'd like to keep my free ad-financed sites
Well, two things:
DNT (Score:2)
'Cause I'm D.N.T., I'm dynamite
(D.N.T.) and I'll win the fight
(D.N.T.) I'm a power load
(D.N.T.) watch me explode
I'm dirty, mean and mighty unclean
I'm a wanted man
Public enemy number one
Understand
So lock up your daughter
Lock up your wife
Lock up your back door
And run for your life
The man is back in town
So don't you mess me 'round
Like they say: (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, you have to be quite naive and downright stupid to expect anything else.
If you provide your attacker (advertisers), who have a vested interest in ignoring the flag, with the means to ignore the flag, it's not going to work.
If Alice asks Charlie, a known snooper, to deliver a message to Bob and she expects Charlie not to take a peek, it's going to take more than writing "don't look, Charlie, tee hee hee!" at the top of the message.
This was dumb idea from the very beginning and destined to explode on the launch pad. Besides, browsers already have an in-built functionality to reject third-party cookies, which pretty much takes care of the problem. Yes, there are some clever and covert ways of doing it without cookies (hidden iframes, forms and whatnot), but there's no reason browsers can't reject those on a whitelist basis (some online software will use these hidden elements legitimately).
we need to start a PAC, 'browsers unitied' maybe? (Score:3)
being able to browse the internet is a form of free speech.
I propose that our PAC lobby congress for its proper free speech rights.
blocking ads is a form of free speech.
please donate to Browsers United so we can get our voices heard.
Re: (Score:2)
Blocking ads is censorship and anti-capitalistic
Was DNT Naive Idealism or Politics? (Score:2)
DNT was never going to work in any practical way. Advertisers weren't going to change because of a voluntary system. So were the proponents naive idealists or playing politics? DNT has made an issue out of data tracking (people++) but also given industry and politicians years of cover (theman++) while it's debated.
I can't help but see this as a near total victory for industry: they haven't actually changed at all. The core issue hasn't been debated in any technical sense (what counts as tracking? how long c
It is a game (Score:2)
Now we follow the game to its conclusion: the advertisers chose to reject DNT, so now we need to install ad blockers everywhere and make ad blocking a standard feature in browsers.
Which was first: Chicken or Egg? (Score:3)
DNT is a starting point (an egg) it could grow into something useful or die. Failure is not "egg on your face" because you have to take the 1st step for the possibilities to open up.
One possible solution:
Politicians pass a law saying how ad corps must respect DNT. It is far less likely to pass such a law without the technology in place; they have a hard time making industry implement any features.
No ads browsing is a fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the alternative. Would you rather pay for the 10 or so sites that you visit on a daily basis? That's been tried and tried and tried and has always failed so far. Maybe someday in the future the magic combination of micro transactions and transparency will be stumbled upon, but it hasn't happened yet. That, and the advertising forces still believe that advertising works. A lot of people don't care about being advertised to, and in some cases they actually prefer it. So for significantly large values of stupidity or apathy, the advertising companies aren't wrong.
The technically able and the ones who care about being subjected to unhealthy amounts of lowest common denominator dreck have tools they use (Firefox, adblock plus, noscript, ghostery, etc.) to avoid the worst of it. Fortunately for them, their mostly free and unfettered access is payed for mainly by those who don't and the small percentage of overlap between the 2 sets.
Being a geek is fun and in this case healthier.
Re: (Score:3)
micropayments were NEVER given a fair try.
wonder why.
my view: advertisers saw that as a threat and shut it the hell down (the idea).
I'd be happy to donate a penny here and a penny there if it means that the scourge known as 'push advertising' would go away.
however, I'm not willing to pay for a site that also double dips in ads.
Re:No ads browsing is a fallacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, a fair number of people tried to offer an olive branch in the form of allowing advertising but not tracking people like animals. The advertisers grabbed that olive branch and poked them in the eye with it, so here we are.
The next move will be either total blocking of ads or websites finding some way to enforce no tracking on the advertisers they work with.
The very few advertisers that actually have a modicum of respect for the people they advertise to would be wise to petition the FTC to regulate advertising firmly before people just totally shut them out.
Capitalism wants to make money (Score:2)
So they don't care what you want, because they want to run their ever larger, bloated, growing websites.
Unless we get a greed cap.
Do Not Track == Do Not Advertise? (Score:2)
I'm curious how they came to the conclusion Do Not Track didn't actually mean Track and instead meant Advertise.
"He said, she said"? (Score:3)
Ed Bott says that Sarah Downey (Privacy Advocate) says that the IAB says that the IAB membership "will continue to monetize data".
Except that to become an IAB member, a company must comply to the IAB code of conduct [iab.net], which includes the self-regulatory program for online behavioral targeting [iab.net]. This includes the requirement of providing a consumer choice mechanism, which has been implemented for the industry at www.aboutads.info [aboutads.info].
I guess fact checking was too much for Ed...
woo (Score:3)
Another battle to fight. (Score:2)
Okay, then.
Is there any open source software that I can use/modify that will allow me to screw with that data collection? In other words, make stuff up, change it and/or send out repetitive and incorrect information? Maybe build a huge pile of useless information that looks good to the trackers, but hides the 'real' me. Can I make myself undesirable to those that want to track me?
If ignoring DNT is ok... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is, these companies are honouring it just enough to make it difficult to figure out which ones are honouring it or not.
Better solution is to assume, as I have always done, that everyone will track given the opportunity, and simply not give anyone the opportunity. I block all ads.
Re: (Score:2)
How so? Since adding my name to that list, I haven't gotten a single unwanted call, except for one type; political robo-calls. However, that will NOT work on the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not how the Do Not Call list works. If you are reported for calling a name on the DNC list, you can be fined upwards of $10,000 per unsolicited call. It is in their best interest not to call the numbers on the list.
Since adding my name to that list years ago, I've yet to receive solicitations over the phone.