Do Not Track Does Not Conquer

Posted Oct 20, 2012 18:08 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: Do Not Track Does Not Conquer by alonz
Parent article: Do Not Track Does Not Conquer

The header does not direct the server to do anything, so "default" doesn't make any sense. The three states provided for in the spec are: "I prefer not to be tracked," "I prefer to be tracked," and no information about the user's preference. The latter is encoded by not sending the header, and is the only sensible thing for a browser to do without active directions to the contrary from the user.

And giving the user the chance to uncheck a checked box isn't active enough. An advertiser would be justified in considering the header not credible if a major web browser were known to work that way.

Do Not Track Does Not Conquer

Posted Oct 20, 2012 19:12 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Duh, of course. I must have had some major malfunction in the semantic parser in my brain when reading this article. Somehow I got the impression that Mozilla and Chrome were also sending the header without user-involvement, sending "Track" by default.

It's optional, so "Don't send" is an option and it's already tri-state. Of course :).