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DuckDuckGo Warns that Google Does Not Respect 'Do Not Track' Browser Setting (spreadprivacy.com) 96

DuckDuckGo cautions internet users that companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, do not respect the "Do Not Track" setting on web browsers. From a report: According to DuckDuckGo's research, over 77% of US adults are not aware of that fact. The "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting on browsers sends signals to web services to stop tracking a user's activity. However, the DNT setting is only a voluntary signal which websites are not obligated to respect. "It can be alarming to realize that Do Not Track is about as foolproof as putting a sign on your front lawn that says "Please, don't look into my house" while all of your blinds remain open."
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DuckDuckGo Warns that Google Does Not Respect 'Do Not Track' Browser Setting

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  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @01:53PM (#58074476)

    If your browser tells sites to not track, and they still do, impose some hefty fines.

    • When the server is off shore and not owned by a US company?

      Protect yourself if you don't want to be tracked... Don't count on the good intentions of the sites you visit... If they want to track you, they will. Even if they don't set out to track you, they likely will collect a lot of information about you in their web server logs and *somebody* can track you if they get the logs and wanted to.

      • Then they don't have jurisdiction to enforce anything. But, we could at least make involuntary surveillance a domestic crime. Combined with making it a crime to purchase such surveillance information from foreigners, it would be a good start.

        The next step would be forming international treaties to the same effect so that international surveillance could also be prosecuted. You'd never get everyone on board, but every little bit helps.

        • Then they don't have jurisdiction to enforce anything.

          Yes, they do. Civil penalties are enforced against foreign corporations all the time. This is not some radical concept.

          I mean, if it's some outlaw North Korean outlet or from some rogue regime like Russia, then it's harder, but not impossible.

          • Sure. There is however some difficulty in prosecuting a foreign company for doing something that's perfectly legal where they did it. After all, you visited *them*, not the other way around.

            We're only just beginning to sort out how to handle jurisdictional issues on the internet, and it's far from settled how such things should be handled. For now, if you want a company you're dealing with to be bound by your country's laws, you should only deal with companies fully located within your own country. Every

      • When the server is off shore and not owned by a US company?

        Yes, moron. Believe it or not, foreign corporations are fined by the US all the time.

        • When the server is off shore and not owned by a US company?

          Yes, moron. Believe it or not, foreign corporations are fined by the US all the time.

          But do they pay? Unless they have some kind of assets in the USA, why would they? Fines are only a deterrent when they can be forcibly collected, AND when they are large enough to sufficiently impact profits.

          • But do they pay?

            Yes.

            As I said, you shouldn't trust companies from rogue states though.

            See, this is one of the benefits of globalism. You have fewer places from where you can do crooked shit.

    • If you live in California in 2020 (or Europe now), you can legally force them to delete all information about you.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        But you can never prove if they actually do. Besides, the NSA, et al is tracking everybody anyway, so what difference does it make? Just crap flood the system with chaff and let god sort it out.

    • The "Do Not Track" setting has no legal authority. It was a marketing scheme (scam) by Microsoft to try to get people to switch back to IE. They could advertise that "our browser supports Do Not Track, while Chrome and Firefox do not," leaving out that it's completely voluntary - the website decides whether or not they want to respect your Do Not Track flag.
      • That's currently true, but it could be changed.

        • I'm sure Ajit Pai will get right on that because he really cares about the consumers.

      • The "Do Not Track" setting has no legal authority. It was a marketing scheme (scam) by Microsoft

        You are either extremely misinformed, or intentionally lying. The current scammy DNT protocol was proposed by Google and Mozilla [theregister.co.uk], with the express purpose of blocking the competing Microsoft design.
        Microsoft's design (proposed as a W3C standard) did not rely on the benevolence of the tracking sites. Here's a relevant quote from the article cited above:

        Microsoft uses a third method. Known as Tracking Protection Lists, it relies on predefined lists of domains known to track your behavior via ad technologies.

        Basically, Microsoft's proposal was AdBlock/uBlock built in every browser. Trackers were blocked on the client, without any request being even sent to tracker

    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      "Do not track" flag is like a sign on a curtain saying "Do not enter" and no other means of preventing entry.

      If I don't want to be tracked, then I close the avenue for the trackers.

    • If your browser tells sites to not track, and they still do, impose some hefty fines.

      With what authority? The entire scheme was voluntarily introduced by some industry code. There's no enforcement mechanism, legal or otherwise. You asking a company to do something in no way obligates them to do anything.

    • by Hillie ( 63573 )

      Or stop being naive and thinking that if you tell criminals not to rob you blind that they will listen.

      Here is a better alternative:

      1. If it's free, it's stealing your data. Don't use it.

      An example of this that I don't know how it works is Honey. Honey "freely" lets you save money on thousands of sites. All this is powered by servers that they have to pay for, and resources that aren't free. So they MUST be selling your data.

      I don't use Honey because I'd rather pay a little extra for stuff, than let another

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The DNT setting is just some completely pointless browser setting. I would be shocked if 23% of adults had any idea what it is in the first place, much less who respects it.

  • However... With it turned on, and they are found tracking your without your consent, or you filling out the approve form, in some areas you may be able to have some legal justification. Because you willingly declined to consent to yourself being tract.

    It is a lot like No Trespassing signs. There is nothing stopping someone from trespassing, however if they get injured on their property, they can at least show the court that they at least gave some warning not to go there, and they shouldn't be responsible

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This was known from day one.

    Trust, it just does not work with corporations.

  • Google has a "don't be evil" motto.

    DDG.gg, shortcut for DuckDuckGo, does not have such a motto.

    Google is not setting the evil bit on the packets it sends you.
  • Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @02:24PM (#58074662) Homepage
    Advertising destroys every medium in which it is used. Ever.

    This is because there is absolutely no restraining force to limit or self police behavior of advertisers. So is Google's behavior any surprise?

    Begin rant.

    I'll start with Radio and not comment.

    TV had a tolerable number of ads. Somewhere during the golden age of TV the ads got more and more. And the quality of ads went way down. It used to be that the ads were somewhat entertaining. Then more and more ads. Lower quality programming.

    People fled to cable. The promise of cable was no ads. That illusion didn't last long. But it was tolerable. And programming content was superior. And included the network TV channels if you needed to see a program on network TV. Then the ads got worse. The content got worse. More and more time was spent on ads, and less on content. It got so bad that after an ad, when the content resumed, there would be more ads walking out onto the show you are watching, obscuring things, sometimes important things.

    People fled to internet TV. Some of it has ads, some does not. Hulu offers ad free for a higher price, which I'm willing to pay. Netflix is free of ads. When they started considering ads, I wrote them about how this is a slippery slope. Netflix has not put in ads, yet. I also suggested if the did introduce ads, have a higher priced ad-free tier. HBO, Starz and Amazon Prime are free of ads.

    Now YouTube has ads. It was okay at first. Now it's getting intolerable. They push YouTube Red. But their ads have gotten so bad, I may just forego ever getting YT Red because I find the ads so offensive.

    The web. No ads at first. It was about information. Then ads came. And came and came and came. And ad / malware networks. Then sites where an article was one paragraph per page, and each page had that one paragraph surrounded in dozens of blinking flashing dancing animated seizure inducing ads. And deceptive ads that try to look like an OS window warning you of something. And the advertising networks, and even host web sites were complicit in this. So I have no sympathy for sites complaining about ad blockers. If a site isn't usable with an ad blocker, I never go there again. No site has or ever will have anything valuable enough to overcome this. And since I won't go there, I won't find out even if they did. And I don't care.

    Ads are a blight on our cities. And even the countryside. Miles and miles of billboards along roads. It's disgusting.

    These people know no bounds. Absolutely none. Phones, tablets, personal computers all spy on us now for the sake of ads! Our cars spy on us for ads. Smart TVs spy on us for ads. IoT devices spy on us for ads.

    Once the technology is available, these people will lobby to require ads on the inside of our eyelids. Yes really. Mark my words. They'll probably want your internal vital organs at some point.
    • Re:Advertising (Score:5, Informative)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @03:08PM (#58074918)

      Ads are a blight on our cities. And even the countryside. Miles and miles of billboards along roads. It's disgusting.

      From Ogden Nash, apparently 1932 https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]

      I think that I shall never see
      a billboard lovely as a tree.
      Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
      I'll never see a tree at all.

      • I think that I shall never see
        a billboard lovely as a tree.
        Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
        I'll never see a tree at all.

        ...Burma Shave.

    • This is because there is absolutely no restraining force to limit or self police behavior of advertisers.

      Actually there was and they were happy to comply when the choice was an active choice made by users and browsers required opt-in to do it. Unfortunately Microsoft shat the bed and made it an opt out feature, then Google and Mozilla happily joined in the fecal party and ... you won't believe this next bit ... advertisers decided "do not track" had stopped being a user choice and decided to just give the middle finger to the entire concept.

    • It's even worse than that - even if advertisers were incredibly polite and non-invasive (Ha!) ads are still inherently evil. Their entire purpose is to make you want something you previously had no interest in. And in doing so they generate an artificial poverty, diminishing your wealth regardless or whether you actually buy whatever's being sold.

    • Ads are a blight on our cities. And even the countryside. Miles and miles of billboards along roads. It's disgusting.

      Growing up in Vermont, where billboards are banned for this very reason, it's still jarring to me to be driving out in the country in some other state only to come across some shitty billboard blocking the scenery. Now they've got LCD screens that light up and are showing video, and that's so fucking distracting I'm seriously tempted to see if a rifle could solve the problem. The advertising in Blade Runner wasn't supposed to be aspirational.

  • A "voluntary signal" is worth almost nothing. Cross-site tracking should be blocked by the browser. I know Firefox and Safari have those as options, at least.

  • I've always assumed "Do Not Track" was akin to unsubscribing from spam mailing lists - it just confirms you're real and guarantees they will continue to spam you/track you until the heat death of the universe.

    Google, Facebook and Twitter are all advertising companies. Of course they engage in any and all practices that let them generate more advertising revenue. It'd be a breach of their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders to not do so.

  • by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @02:50PM (#58074824) Homepage Journal

    The Fable of the Wolves and the Sheepherders. (or Why DNT Is Stupid)
    Originally Published on October 27, 2012

    Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.

    One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.

    The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.

    The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.

    Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.

    Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.

    The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to not allow farmers to tell the sheep about the red paint, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.

    Some Sheep as well as

  • For most, that should be "good enough"
  • Wolves ignore "Do Not Eat The Sheep" signs. Film at 11.

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