Do Not Track Plus (Firefox add-on) - Restore your online privacy - Mini-Review

[IainB]

Basic Info

App Name	Do Not Track Plus (DNT+) by Abine.
App URL	Mozilla add-ons
App Version Reviewed	Freeware Firefox add-on version 2.0.6 (as at 2012-02-17)
Test System Specs	Here is a comparison table of features between different versions of Firefox privacy management tools/add-ons (e.g., including Ghostery): [attach]

[nosh]

Looks very interesting... just installed it. Thanks for the review.

For anyone wondering if it's an AdBlock Plus replacement... it isn't.

An excerpt from the author's comment on the Mozilla site.

2. incidental ad-blocking. DNT+ is not designed to be an ad-blocker. we FULLY SUPPORT contextual advertising and the ability of web site owners to make money from it. Any ad-blocking we do is incidental and is a byproduct of the configuration of the ad-network and javascript they use. There are ways to advertise online without behavioral targeting and profiling. If you see a large amount of ads being blocked, let us know and we'll investigate.

[IainB]

As an edit, I have just posted this into the review:
EDIT: 2012-02-18 0026hrs

Google Circumvents Safari Privacy Protections - This is Why We Need Do Not Track
A signal weakness of the DNT+ approach would seem to be that it relies on trust, and that trust has apparently already been breached by Google in the case of the Safari browser's DNT approach.

[joiwind]

I'm using DNT+ on Iron since a few days and comparing the results with Ghostery - for the moment I prefer DNT+ as it provides more user information, however the database is a bit smaller than the Ghostery one but this will no doubt change soon.

[cranioscopical]

Thanks for taking the trouble to do this, IainB 

[Innuendo]

Grr...replied earlier to this and it seems to have evaporated. My original reply was:

I've been using TACO 3.0+Albine for quite some time. Despite some missteps in them trying to get their commercial side of things off the ground, it has been pretty good to me. I used to be a Ghostery user, but once I found out they sell users' data I was off to other pastures.

The comparison chart above left a bad taste in my mouth. It makes it appear as those DNT+ has ad-blocking functionality & from what I can see from nosh's reply, I wasn't the only one to make that mistake.

[IainB]

Just so as to help clarify things, I have made this edit to the opening review post:
EDIT: 2012-02-18 1410hrs

DNT+ is not an ad-blocker. It blocks personal data tracking cookies that are used to track your online activity on the Internet.
(It is thus similar to the Firefox Ghostery add-on.)

[Innuendo]

Just so as to help clarify things, I have made this edit to the opening review post:

Just to clarify my earlier remark, the confusion was due to the way the DNT+ author(s) position the product. You didn't contribute to the confusion at all.

[IainB]

Posted here in case it might be of use.
Interesting notes. Though I have not experienced any difficulty logging in to my router (a THOMSON model). I wondered if other users of this FF add-on might have been having difficulty.
From: http://blog.ffextensionguru.com/2012/04/01/do-not-track-linksys-router-admin/

Do Not Track & LinkSys Router Admin
by The Guru
I discovered an odd glitch when trying to access LinkSys Router Admin interface via Firefox. I was using the correct user name and password, but I was being told my login was wrong. I was able to get in via Chrome or IE, but not Firefox. I was looking around the LinkSys forums for something else when I came across a couple of posts from other people who could not get in via Firefox. Turns out if you have the Do Not Track (Tools > Options > Privacy > Tracking [Tell websites I do not want to be tracked]) enabled, the router admin will not work in Firefox. Turning this feature off and restarting Firefox I was able to access the router admin via Firefox with no issues.

[nosh]

My Netgear login works fine.

[Tinman57]

  They also released an Internet Explorer version.  I installed it last week but had to kill it because it also stopped Javascript buttons.  I couldn't reply or post anything on PCWorld.com forums, every time I clicked the reply button nothing happened.  Soon as I killed DNTP it started working again.