FCC won't track Do Not Track America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided it won't intervene against companies that don't honour user Do Not Track requests. The decision (PDF here) comes in response to a request by Consumer Watchdog, which in June asked the FCC to support users' Do Not Track browser settings. The request put the FCC in …
Privacy Badger isn't perfect, but it does seem to enforce DNT, at least on some level.
I'm sorry... but isn't 'do not track' almost the same as 'do not call' ?
If my number is added to a 'do not call' register and some marketing a-hole decides to call me anyway how is that different from setting 'do not track' in my browser and being tracked by some ad-slinging f*ckwad company ?
Re: the bad fit
Before the wordsmiths inflict a wedgie upon themselves they should consider how effective the 'do not call' wishlists have been for users, and whether they want their personal data protected by encryption or by Do Not Track.
I'm all for Net Neutrality. My ISP Time Warner attempted to force me to subscribe to their TV service by slowing down Netflix. Technically they declined to upgrade their interconnections, but it's the same thing, they tried to force me to pay for their TV service instead of Netflix. What I want the FCC regulating on the internet is the connection, minimum upload and download speeds, I'd like to see some maximum allowable latencies to certain points at most times, at some point.
What I don't care to have is the FCC regulating content on the internet. I don't like to use the example of curse or swear words, but you can't broadcast certain word on the radio or TV during the daytime, because the airwaves are licensed by the FCC to broadcasters and the FCC has some rules controlling the content. I don't feel that the FCC needs to be given any authority to control content on the internet, beyond no blocking of places/things/protocols on the internet. I want to see the FCC with the power to prevent modification of content delivered through the internet except where explicitly requested by the customer. The ISP could offer content modification services for free or for a cost, but the no modification option must be the default and must not cost more than the modified option. Example, a mobile provider offers an unmodified internet with a 4GB cap by default. They offer a service which you can request for $2 a month to save your data by automatically downsampling all video over 720p to 720p. I'd like to see that sort of thing legal. The thing making it OK is that the customer requested the content be modified by their ISP and the ISP didn't charge less for an unmodified version.
All the laws that apply to the rest of life also apply online. The US can and does make laws which apply to the online world, in the US and often beyond. A more appropriate place for rules to govern the interaction between internet users and content providers might be the FTC, Federal Trade Commission. Advertisers pay money for people who see their ads, therefore, trade. We have truth in advertising laws and seeing rules along similar lines for the internet may well be a good thing. I could see potentially acceptable rules on what may and may not be tracked coming from them. I expect that they would lean heavily in the direction of commerce, aka, corporations, but while not great it's not so terrible either.
@"Your alien overlord - fear me" Your reply is useless. It's not funny and doesn't take into account the difficulty the FCC had in implementing net neutrality rules, and the major opposition facing them since, an entire political party, Republicans, 1 of 2 in the US doesn't believe in science and wants to take away it's funding.
@massivelySerial Your sarcasm simply confuses your comment, neither adding wit nor amusement to it. Do not track was a good idea at the time it was proposed. I will agree that it wasn't going to work, unless it gained legal enforceability. If the data exists and is not illegal to collect it will be collected unless the cost is to high to do so. The big thing that killed it was Microsoft making it the default choice for its browser and hiding the tracking OK option in the advanced setup settings. Had Microsoft presented it as a neutral choice, along the lines of the browser ballot advertisers couldn't have dismissed it so easily. As it is advertisers can say next to no one using Internet Explorer made an informed choice to opt out of tracking, and can thereby ignore it. 3rd party resource whitelisting is a good idea, but still not without issue.
DNT was effectively dead as soon as it the W3C[1] ruled that offering for confirmation a default to the user of "On" (Microsoft) was not allowed and browsers doing so could have their setting ignored. Hiding the option (defaulted to "Off") in the depths of the browser config while not actually telling anyone about it is the "right" approach apparently (Mozilla, Google, etc ad-funded nauseum).
[1] The finest standards money can buy.
"Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography."
Edward Snowden (paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson)
Disabuse yourselves of the notion that people who make money from tracking you are going to stop trying. Regardless of how many unenforceable laws or feel-good-but-useless protocols (hi there, DNT) are made, the only way they're going to stop is if you leave them no other option.
Block scripts and cookies (unless you absolutely need them for a given site) and browse through a VPN. Let's see how the, "We'll ignore DNT" crowd likes dem apples.
Too many sites require cookies to work-- blocking them by default and having to mess with whitelists is annoying, and you end up enabling them on many or most sites anyway (defeating the purpose of blocking them in the first place). It's better to let the sites set cookies, but use an addon that automatically deletes them soon thereafter (like Self-Destructing Cookies). The sites work, but the cookies don't persist long enough for any tracking to take place. I also use a manual cookie crusher addon that lets me kill cookies with a mouse click, if I don't want to wait for SDC to do it automatically.
In conjunction with a dynamic IP address (which has been the norm for every ISP I've had to date), outfits like Google will be able to collect bits and pieces of data about what you do and where you go, but it can't be connected to what you did yesterday or what you will do tomorrow, so it's useless.
If you use Flash, be aware that sites can store LSOs (local shared objects) that are not deleted with normal cookies, but can function just like tracking cookies. You'll need another addon, like BetterPrivacy, to wipe those "super cookies".
I leave Flash on "ask to activate", and I seldom actually need to activate it anymore. A ton of sites try to activate the plugin, but nearly all work just fine if I leave it blocked. What are those sites doing? I can only presume they're trying to track me, since the site functions perfectly well without Flash functionality. Keeping it blocked prevents LSO tracking and avoids the vulnerabilities that have long plagued the Flash plugin.
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