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Do Not Track

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Tinman57:
The Do Not Track standard has crossed into crazy territory
The advertising industry wants to change the definition of Do Not Track into something Orwell would be proud of. One influential member of the W3C working group says he's lost the energy to go on. Is it time to kill Do Not Track?

http://www.zdnet.com/the-do-not-track-standard-has-crossed-into-crazy-territory-7000005502

IainB:
Legislators slam advertising group for advising members to avoid Do Not Track technology

Yes, but will legislators actually do anything about it?
(Sound of crickets chirping.)
-IainB (October 11, 2012, 03:50 PM)
--- End quote ---

When I first read about DNT in IE and saw what had been done and what was expected, I have to admit to skeptically thinking that it would be best to avoid the whole idea, and I switched it OFF in IE. I could smell a rat.
This was because I could not see that M$oft were a likely candidate as consumer champion for leading the revolt on this one, mainly because M$oft have historically shown themselves to be the ones who are always first in line to assault the consumer (or anyone else, for that matter) if it's for their own gain. They are an excellent corporate psychopath.

I reckoned that it was more likely that M$oft would be doing this for their own gain, and that it could probably be a deliberate effort to to effect a reduction in Google's advertising click revenues.

In any event, the DNT approach needed to get the buy-in of the advertisers, and again historically they have been able to demonstrate that, as a group, they are unlikely to be able to change their ways and not force their self-serving advertising strategies on the consumer.

IE suggesting that it was possible to "think philanthropy and empathy" with and on the consumers' behalf?
Yeah, right.

TaoPhoenix:
I think I have a slightly different idea about MS and IE here.

For decades (!!) techies have wailed about the perils of Opt-Out. Remember the Toolbar craze of a while ago, and spending an hour de-toxing a user's/friend's copy of IE because they didn't see how to click "custom special advanced obscure install and make sure you toggle this weird little check box off"?

So while of course it's just a gamey-move, it sounds good for MS from the "security" perspective where a user will just be left alone to get on with their work. Then now cue the attack dogs. So it's not so much killing "this" standard as these are the first thrashings of the topic until something else emerges, hopefully better than abject consumer submission!

Renegade:
I have nothing polite, constructive, or non-violent to say. Trying to argue with fools only proves that there are 2.

mahesh2k:
I like the reasoning there. If you don't support economy with advertising, you're not american. Well I am not american to begin with and I don't like ad slapped on my face to suck my already limited bandwidth, be it from america or any other country or even my own country.

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