Apache Patch To Override IE 10's Do Not Track Setting 375
hypnosec writes "A new patch for Apache by Roy Fielding, one of the authors of the Do Not Track (DNT) standard, is set to override the DNT option if the browser reaching the server is Internet Explorer 10. Microsoft has by default enabled DNT in Internet Explorer 10 stating that it is to 'better protect user privacy.' This hasn't gone down well with ad networks, users and other browser makers. According to Mozilla, the DNT feature shouldn't be either in an active state or an inactive state until and unless a user specifically sets it. Along the same lines is the stance adopted by Digital Advertising Alliance. The alliance has revealed that it will only honor DNT if and only if it is not switched on by default. This means advertisers will be ignoring the DNT altogether no matter how a particular browser is set up. The DNT project has another member – Apache. It turns out that Microsoft's stance is like a thorn to Apache as well. Fielding has written a patch for the web server titled 'Apache does not tolerate deliberate abuse of open standards.' The patch immediately sparked a debate, which instigated Fielding to elaborate on his work: 'The only reason DNT exists is to express a non-default option. That's all it does. [...] It does not protect anyone's privacy unless the recipients believe it was set by a real human being, with a real preference for privacy over personalization.'"
Gee, How Much Google Paid For This (Score:2, Interesting)
It's already starting to bother me. I'm seeing these advertisements here on Slashdot too. After I've searched for something on Google, the related advertisements start to come up EVERYWHERE on the internet. Seriously, they come after you. If you search for specific flights you start to see ads for that everyone. It'll haunt you and there's nothing you can do.
Google already got into trouble over Safari privacy violations [slashdot.org]. Did you know that Safari is currently the only browser that blocks third party blocking cookies like those used by advertising networks (Google)? All the other browsers than Safari and IE are in bed with advertisers because both Firefox and Opera get revenue directly from Google. Chrome of course is the worst because it's designed by the advertising network itself.
You know what's the worst thing? I have a developing case of paranoid schizophrenia [mindreading.me]. The behavioral advertisements are driving me nuts! It's pure hell when you have such case. I have tried to ease me by blocking such things but still Google gets thru something. They literally follow my every step everywhere. Imagine how paranoid you feel when you're already sick. What am I going to do, stop using the internet? That's really nice.
So for the love of god Apache Project, stop taking bribes from Google and doing evil things like this!
How it seems... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the same time, what guarantee do advertisers give users that their ads are not a potential attack vector, or what standard do they follow that their ads are not intrusive and degrade the performance of a users machine or overly distract and irritate the users? How invasive do their ads and data collection get to be?
Overall, I see where they are coming from but at the same time all I hear is a bunch of self-entitled whiners. Is there any good reason to instantly get tracked as soon as you visit your first website, or should you be allowed to later reveal yourself to the world if you so desire the features this advertises and data miners claim to provide? The most obvious being targeted ads and more relevant searches when using Google.
So when is it a default setting, mr. Fielding? (Score:5, Interesting)
When using IE10 for the first time (per user) you get a screen where you can choose "express settings". The screen clearly spells out what that means, *including* what DNT will be set to. Arguably, the user *has* made a decision by selecting express settings. How does Roy Fieldings patch determine how much of that text the user read before continuing?
And how does the patch determine when a user *explicitly* sets the DNT.
Yes, Microsoft probably does this because it will annoy Google and hurt them more than it will hurt Bing. But at the same time it does help protect users' privacy. What a joke if Apache accepts this patch. What a sell-out. Disgusting.
Re:We care about ad networks? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the site is so concerned about money and income, why don't they just use regular ads instead of tracking ads then?
They can choose. Use tracking ads, have them blocked, and get nothing. Or use regular ads, and get something.
It's hardly our fault that they choose to abuse their customers and then bitch about getting no money because of it.
Re:It does not protect anyone's privacy... (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is, DNT only works, at present, on a voluntary basis. As you say, your stance (privacy by default) is not what any ad company will voluntarily choose -- but as long as only a few users opt-in, it can make sense to roll with it for good PR, and to keep the people who care about privacy placated so they don't agitate for privacy regulations the ad men would have to comply with.
It does not protect anyone's privacy unless the recipients believe it was set by a real human being, with a real preference for privacy over personalization
Yeah, that is bull. The recipients don't care that it's set by a real human being, they care that it's set on a small enough fraction of UAs that the PR is worth more than the value of the data they forgo. The former (for now) satisfies the latter, but if enough people started setting it, it'd still be too many, and they'd start ignoring it.
Now you may (as I do) consider the whole situation laughable, because it by design secures privacy for a few by throwing the masses to the wolves, but that's the system we have, and IE's default breaks the conditions under which that system can continue to exist. There's only three ways it can play out (so long as it's the same voluntary cooperation):
(A) ad networks see IE's market share as "too much", disregard DNT altogether.
(B) ad networks see IE's market share as acceptable losses and continue to respect DNT across the board; Firefox etc. eventually copy IE's default; ad networks then disregard DNT altogether.
(C) ad networks see IE's market share as "too much", disregard DNT only on IE, nobody copies IE -- at the very least the system continues to work for people who care enough to set DNT on non-IE UAs, and there's the possibility IE switches back to opt-in DNT, after which the ad networks will restore the status quo.
A and B are total losses (of the voluntary scheme; the aftermath may or may not result in new privacy regulations); C maintains the status quo for many users, and has the possibility to return to status quo across the board.
By being set, it protects my privacy as long as "recipients" abide by it without question — it only becomes an issue when "recipients" qualify when they will abide by it.
Oh, come off it. It protects your privacy when those qualifications don't affect you. So don't run IE, and it still protects your privacy. Now if you meant "it protects everyone's privacy as long as "recipients" abide by it without question" , then yes. But since we all know the DNT system is designed to operate by throwing ignorant or apathetic individuals to the wolves, protesting that it doesn't protect everyone's privacy is kinda disingenuous.
Re:Two wrongs do not make a right (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We care about ad networks? (Score:5, Interesting)
The best content on the internet is produced out of a passion for creating the content, rather than a desire to make a buck. The commoditization of the internet will ruin it, yet. We can't even escape marketing and obnoxious advertising *here*. The majority of people just want to make a buck, right down to the last mommy-blogger that plasters her five-views-a-month blogger page with adsense just so she can eek a nickel out of every last word.
Remember when people did shit because they cared? They didn't have to monetize every square inch of every page of their website? The created services and content because they loved doing it or cared about the community they were doing it for? Remember when sysops built communities for free? They bought the hardware, they maintained everything, they paid for the phone lines, they spent hundreds of hours adding content, connecting their services to multi-node door games, setting up FIDOnet, accounting, etc. And they did it because they enjoyed it. And if people appreciated it enough, they chipped in some cash. Not because they were asked to, but because they wanted to. And you didn't have to be confronted with ads.
I'm not saying the whole internet has to be like that, but does *EVERYONE* have to eek a penny out of every last spot they can? Not just big websites with huge advertising contracts, but right down to every jackhole with a dinky little website or blog?
When I started my site in 1997, I did it with the specific intention of never monetizing it. I didn't charge money. I didn't charge fees. I didn't sell ads. Nothing. I did it because it was enjoyable and it served a purpose for people that they found valuable. I'm sure they'd have paid if I asked, but I didn't. It felt dirty. It felt unnecessary. I thought it was a righteous and reasonable thing to do.
Almost a decade later, I met someone in a bar and it turned out she was a long-time member of my site. We got to talking about it for awhile and when I brought up advertising, she paused and said that she actually had never even noticed that there was no advertising on the site. I couldn't believe it. I feel so accosted by advertising every fucking where I turn that I sure as hell notice it on sites and appreciate the lack of it on others. And here, I discovered that regular people neither give a shit nor even notice whether there are or aren't any ads.
Re:MS aren't doing it for altruism anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft are setting DNT on Windows 8 (and by extension their phones and tablets) so that competing advertising services like Google et al are shut out of their ecosystem. I bet whatever terms and conditions pop up when a Windows 8 starts for the first time, or via those Bing apps means that the DNT setting don't apply to Microsoft itself.
Actually, it seems IE10-team has a pretty independent focus on user experience. On my Windows 8 test machine it has proactively several times recommended to remove addins from Microsoft to speed up performance (from Bing, from Windows Live, from Office!). I'm guessing those other MS divisions must be livid. I know we've loved to make fun of IE for quite some time, but it is a good thing that IE10 is shaping up quite nicely (we don't want to replace "made for IE6" with "made for webkit", and you can see what more is coming at http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/ [interopera...ridges.com]
Re:We care about ad networks? (Score:5, Interesting)
We had worthless crap spewed by some amateur individuals instead of worthless crap being spewed by some professional agencies.
I fail to see the big improvement.
Re:Gee, How Much Google Paid For This (Score:4, Interesting)
Google and every other advertiser know that, when given the choice to opt in on something, you likely won't. I could type a wall of text, but if you have a few minutes you could watch this TED talk about opt-in vs opt-out.
To sum up: you are not really in control of your decisions
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html [ted.com]
Re:Noncommercial content (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We care about ad networks? (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to know how to do something elegantly, sensibly, or just at all. In the 90s, this meant typing in your search string and unless you were looking for something completely outlandish, altavista usually offered you some university page where that problem was discussed by some students.
Or you used Dejavu usenet search and found the technical group that either already had the answer, or was the right place to ask it.
Then Google bought Dejavu, and mixed its own "Googlegroups" forums in with it inextricably, and allowed any Google user to send unlimited amounts of spam to usenet. So every single fucking newsgroup was full of ads for knockoff Chinese sports shoes, Rolex, pyramid scams, porn, etc, etc. The signal to noise ratio became so bad that almost everyone abandoned usenet. Seemed to be Google's idea, after all they can very effectively filter spam from GMail, but did absolutely nothing to prevent spam -- mostly from their own users -- going into usenet. A wonderful resource was destroyed so Google could try to promote their own forums, which never took off, so we don't even have that as a alternative. Now you have to search and find the right web forum. And when that forum goes offline, all its accumulated knowledge just disappears.
Re:Gee, How Much Google Paid For This (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, +5 for a shill account with one paranoid delusional comment.
1) It's not obvious that Google is behind this. Roy Fielding, the man responsible for it, works for Adobe.
2) If Roy Fielding were a sock puppet for Google, and Google would prefer DNT not to exist at all, then he probably wouldn't have made DNT in the first place.
Re:We care about ad networks? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was no "rule" at all.
Almost all ISPs had usenet servers and filtered spam. The ones that didn't were blacklisted by the others. Until Google came along. Then many ISPs stopped providing usenet feeds and told their users to use Google. And Google didn't filter spam. It enabled spammers to use throwaway accounts. Didn't matter that the account was deleted later, they could get a new one immediately and keep going. Some premium hosts blocked Google posts, but that also blocked many legitimate posters who didn't want to pay form a usenet feed.
Anyway, where before you could filter out all the crap from Russia, China, India, etc, now the biggest usenet host of all in the world was generating the most spam. Those cunts killed usenet. .