> DNT is essentially acknowledging that a 3rd-party is the one in control of your privacy in the 1st place, and you have to resort to asking this 3rd-party -- which has financial (or whatever) interests in tracking you -- to not track/data mine you, and trusting that they respect your wish, with no way for you to find out whether your request is respected. In short, it's BS, and supporting tracking/data mining is agreeing that tracking/data mining is the natural, expected behavior and thus an opt-out "feature".
> Nobody should ever agree to this.
> I see it differently: tracking is opt-in, and the ideal is that users are in full control of their privacy by default. Those who want to track/data mine you should ask you to opt-in, along with all the detailed information of how the data collated from you will be used and monetized (lists all entities to which your data is sold), in the spirit of informed consent.
> Currently the way for users to enforce their privacy choice is to use all the tools at their disposal to prevent their data from ending up in the hands of the trackers/data miners, and DNT is not one of these tools.
Surprised to still see that included on here. Apple removed support for it over a year ago since it never gained much traction and ironically can be used as an additional variable for fingerprinting.
That's basically what DNT was supposed to be—browsers said "do not track me" and "legitimate" trackers respected it. I agree that it's dumb. Ironically, DNT is now just one more bit that makes fingerprinting your browser easier.
DNT was supposed to be that until Microsft decided to make it on by default pretending it to be a big privacy move on their part. Because it was no longer a user choice advertisers decided it was no longer reasonable to honor it. So they just ignore it most of the time. And thus DNT became completely obsolete.
The EFF seems to essentially be an extension of the Silicon Valley business model - it's like the notices at casinos giving a number to call if you have a gambling problem. They're not going to address the underlying issues, but they'll offer some ineffective band aids for them.
> Our tests indicate that you have you have strong protection against Web tracking, though your software isn’t checking for Do Not Track policies.
> Unblocking 3rd parties that honor Do Not Track? ..... No [marked in red, as if this were a bad thing]
Are they suggesting that I unblock trackers when the provider posts a text file pinky swearing that they honor a do-not-track policy?
This smells like another "acceptable ads" program.