from Hacker News

An Update on Microsoft’s Approach to Do Not Track

by thisisblurry on 4/3/15, 4:35 PM with 60 comments

• by forgottenpass on 4/3/15, 5:32 PM

  but we will provide customers with clear information on how to turn this feature on in the browser settings should they wish to do so

  A smart reaction to the given reason companies were ignoring DNT. But as long as more than X% of people enable it, websites that want to track will keep coming up with lame excuses to ignore it.

• by dudus on 4/3/15, 6:00 PM

  It was always the intention of DNT to represent the user choice.

  It was just not explicit that it should be OFF by default. Reviewers fault. Microsoft, made a Marketing stunt of enabling it by default 2 years ago, in practice killing the point of DNT and setting back the industry several years.

  With a default option DNT would have no reason to be honored by any site owner. We could be enjoying native DNT tracking right now if Microsoft hadn't done that stupid dick move 2 years ago.

  How many years we'll need before the number of users that already have DNT set to ON by default are negligent is hard to measure.

  This should be a post apologizing for the trouble they caused and for destroyed the point of a W3C proposal that set back the industry for several years. Instead it looks like another Marketing stunt.

• by sgift on 4/3/15, 6:01 PM

  Probably a good approach to deprive companies tracking users of some of their excuses ("it's not really the will of the people if you pre-activate it" ... yeah, sure), but I feel a working DNT implementation will need law support and very harsh punishments. That would be at least far more useful than the EU cookie law in helping people.

• by ShannonSofield on 4/3/15, 7:21 PM

  The fact that I still get snail mail spam catalogs in my mailbox each day, with no mandated option to opt-out, I see no way that marketers will respect DNT. The gov't seems to believe that the economy relies on its ability to market to consumers, even if they don't want to be targeted.

• by Panino on 4/3/15, 7:53 PM

  Consider the possibility that DNT does more harm than good:

  1) Since it's not default, it makes browsers more unique and thus more trackable.

  2) It gives many (perhaps even most?) non-technical users a false sense of security, making them less likely to take more effective measures.

  Weighed against what miniscule good DNT might do (I think it does next to none), these two reasons alone make DNT harmful.

• by cm2187 on 4/3/15, 6:47 PM

  The debate on DNT is completely sterile as this thing is absolutely toothless. It's like advertising a flag "do not infect me" as an anti-virus technology.

• by danbruc on 4/3/15, 6:28 PM

  This whole thing is pretty silly. If you are not sending a DNT signal then almost surly only because you don't know about it or you don't care enough, almost surly not because you really prefer being tracked. Or is there really a relevant group of users preferring to be tracked? If yes, why?

• by jgrowl on 4/3/15, 5:53 PM

  People that aren't tech savvy and won't understand how to configure their browser are exactly the reason why DNT should be default.

  Sites that ignore DNT should be blacklisted.

• by npizzolato on 4/3/15, 6:22 PM

  > Without this change, websites that receive a DNT signal from the new browsers could argue that it doesn’t reflect the users’ preference, and therefore, choose not to honor it.

  With this change, websites could argue that they don't care and choose not to honor it. Is there any actual enforcement of Do Not Track? If not, the whole idea seems broken at its core.

• by yuhong on 4/3/15, 6:01 PM

  I wonder if anyone used IE11's interface for getting user permission before tracking.

• by higherpurpose on 4/3/15, 6:09 PM

  > As a result, DNT will not be the default state in Windows Express Settings moving forward

  I always disable all of Microsoft's "on" settings when installing Windows, as they usually try to pass some sneaky stuff by me, and even if I don't fully understand what something does, I feel safer having disabled it.

  As for the DNT option, I've never really cared for it, as I never use IE for anything.

  But my point is that Microsoft tries to hide these "user choices" in its Express Settings when installing Windows, so of course this doesn't reflect people's true choices.

  Now if only Microsoft approached their "default settings" there in the same way, and didn't assume stuff like "you want to use a Microsoft account, rather than a local account, don't you?" (This is actually represents two of the top 3 request in Windows 10 user feedback in the Security section - not requiring a Microsoft account by default).

  https://windows.uservoice.com/forums/265757-windows-feature-...