Do Not Track in the Windows 8 Setup Experience

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Brendon Lynch, Microsoft's Chief Privacy Officer, says that the new Do Not Track feature in IE10 will be on by default. Those of you that want to be tracked can switch off the DNT feature in the menu.

With Windows 8’s recent release to manufacturing, we know many people are interested in how customers will discover Do Not Track (DNT) in Internet Explorer 10. DNT will be enabled in the “Express Settings” portion of the Windows 8 set-up experience. There, customers will also be given a “Customize” option, allowing them to easily switch DNT “off” if they’d like.
Click to expand...
 
DNT in IE10 might as well be permanently off. The group working on DNT has in the spec that they do not have to respect any client's DNT request if the client defaults requests to DNT.

All big corporations will ignore ALL IE10 DNT requests now. They've hurt their users not helped them.

"That means that Microsoft IE 10, which the company announced last week will have Do Not Track turned on by default, won’t be compliant with the official spec."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/default-do-not-track/
 
Our approach to DNT in IE10 is part of our commitment to privacy by design and putting people first.
Click to expand...
I'm certain the opportunity to place a bit of pain on Google's advertising efforts hasn't played even the slightest part in their having come to this decision. Nope, it's all about the customers!
 
I have a simple solution: Whenever the browser detects 3rd-party cookies, ask the user once if they want to DNT enabled on this site, DNT enabled on all sites, DNT off. Just like the remember password prompt.
 
In stark contrast with Chrome OS which has a feature to track absolutely everything you click on.
 
Some people at Microsoft don't seem to understand the bigger picture... that the entire Internet is funded by advertisement.

Millions (ok, probably billions) is dedicated to creating free content on the web that users enjoy...
Based on tracking the users.

No advertisement... no great web content.

Here are a few examples:

Those guys that made that 10 minute video review of that crockpot you want to buy? They are funded by advertisement from Amazon.

Free nutrition guides? Funded by advertisement.
Free 'how-to' guides? Funded by advertisement.

Hardocp... Funded by advertisement.

Crippling the advertisement & referral industry by defaulting their browser (and OS... which is sneaky and monopolistic) is going to do more harm than good. What's worse is that they are going to do this without the user's understanding the real consequences.

Sure, "do not track" sounds good. It sounds like the "do not call" list so you don't get called at 9pm at night.

But it's not that. It has nothing to do with that.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you make 10 full-in depth reviews on Youtube of all the best coffee makers.... and someone buys them BECAUSE of your reviews. Then you won't be credited for your work.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you're an advertiser trying to figure out what ads are profitable and which ones aren't... you won't be able to do so. (When people click on an ad and purchase something at your store, you need to know where that user came from... so you can give that site more money in the future. HardOCP's business model relies on this... unless you're getting paid to do specific hardware reviews... which is possible.)

Regardless, if e-commerce stores can't track, they won't spend. If content creators can't track, they won't create content.

The 'do not track' feature isn't there to hurt people (seriously, have you ever been negatively affected by tracking?) but instead, to help improve the user experience.

What's going to happen is there's going to be a serious backlash & boycott on many sites.

You'll also have some novel companies coming up with ways to track people in spite of the 'do not track' feature... which will result in more security flaws because people will be forced to install & authorize 3rd party software / scripts.

Long term... if this was to continue, then the business model of the ENTIRE INTERNET would have to change (from free content everywhere!) to something new.
 
BombermanX said:
DNT in IE10 might as well be permanently off. The group working on DNT has in the spec that they do not have to respect any client's DNT request if the client defaults requests to DNT.

All big corporations will ignore ALL IE10 DNT requests now. They've hurt their users not helped them.

"That means that Microsoft IE 10, which the company announced last week will have Do Not Track turned on by default, won’t be compliant with the official spec."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/default-do-not-track/
Click to expand...

And once some news stations 'consumer advocate' figures out that the setting is there and not turned on by default on every other browser Microsoft an say that they have the consumer in mind and stuck to their principles on the matter. National exposure will come and a big deal will be made over this, especially when it's revealed that companies are ignoring the standard.
 
killboy said:
Some people at Microsoft don't seem to understand the bigger picture... that the entire Internet is funded by advertisement.

Millions (ok, probably billions) is dedicated to creating free content on the web that users enjoy...
Based on tracking the users.

No advertisement... no great web content.

Here are a few examples:

Those guys that made that 10 minute video review of that crockpot you want to buy? They are funded by advertisement from Amazon.

Free nutrition guides? Funded by advertisement.
Free 'how-to' guides? Funded by advertisement.

Hardocp... Funded by advertisement.

Crippling the advertisement & referral industry by defaulting their browser (and OS... which is sneaky and monopolistic) is going to do more harm than good. What's worse is that they are going to do this without the user's understanding the real consequences.

Sure, "do not track" sounds good. It sounds like the "do not call" list so you don't get called at 9pm at night.

But it's not that. It has nothing to do with that.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you make 10 full-in depth reviews on Youtube of all the best coffee makers.... and someone buys them BECAUSE of your reviews. Then you won't be credited for your work.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you're an advertiser trying to figure out what ads are profitable and which ones aren't... you won't be able to do so. (When people click on an ad and purchase something at your store, you need to know where that user came from... so you can give that site more money in the future. HardOCP's business model relies on this... unless you're getting paid to do specific hardware reviews... which is possible.)

Regardless, if e-commerce stores can't track, they won't spend. If content creators can't track, they won't create content.

The 'do not track' feature isn't there to hurt people (seriously, have you ever been negatively affected by tracking?) but instead, to help improve the user experience.

What's going to happen is there's going to be a serious backlash & boycott on many sites.

You'll also have some novel companies coming up with ways to track people in spite of the 'do not track' feature... which will result in more security flaws because people will be forced to install & authorize 3rd party software / scripts.

Long term... if this was to continue, then the business model of the ENTIRE INTERNET would have to change (from free content everywhere!) to something new.
Click to expand...

You must've been a telemarketer in a previous life. "How will people buy stuff if we don't creepily stalk and pester them?"
 
Advertisements could still get to the eyes of customers even if those ads aren't tracking you. Why do ads need to track you? Because the people hosting the ads want to have complicated statistics. Raw hit numbers aren't enough for advertisers to be satisfied.
 
killboy said:
-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you make 10 full-in depth reviews on Youtube of all the best coffee makers.... and someone buys them BECAUSE of your reviews. Then you won't be credited for your work.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you're an advertiser trying to figure out what ads are profitable and which ones aren't... you won't be able to do so. (When people click on an ad and purchase something at your store, you need to know where that user came from... so you can give that site more money in the future. HardOCP's business model relies on this... unless you're getting paid to do specific hardware reviews... which is possible.)

Regardless, if e-commerce stores can't track, they won't spend. If content creators can't track, they won't create content.

The 'do not track' feature isn't there to hurt people (seriously, have you ever been negatively affected by tracking?) but instead, to help improve the user experience.

What's going to happen is there's going to be a serious backlash & boycott on many sites.

You'll also have some novel companies coming up with ways to track people in spite of the 'do not track' feature... which will result in more security flaws because people will be forced to install & authorize 3rd party software / scripts.

Long term... if this was to continue, then the business model of the ENTIRE INTERNET would have to change (from free content everywhere!) to something new.
Click to expand...

While I agree with most of what you say...

Do not track will only effect, tracking. If you create reviews on youtube and have sponsored links (just like the ones HardOCP uses), they will still be "counted". I will say I am not a tracking/web guru but I think it would be rare to find an referral program that tracks sites a user has been to and IF they once happened to go to one of your sites with a review, they would flag your review as the reason for a purchase. Most cases like this I know about are special links which track referrals, again I am not an expert.

Do not track will NOT effect advertisers knowing if an ad is working well or not, like you mentioned. As I said, these are generally sponsored links, which have a code in the link flagging the add as being "clicked through".

Do not track WILL effect targeted ads, that's it. Will it make ads less effective, yeah without tracking they won't be able to put an amazon ad with a picture of the last item you looked at on Amazon. It would just be a generic ad.

I have not seen the bill, but I would also suspect that sites will still be able to find out where your are (based on IP), your ISP (based on IP), OS, Browser etc They just won't be able to compile a list of previous sites, ads etc used or looked at.

I do agree that a US law on the internet is pretty lame, just host your ads in some foreign country. Not to mention all the ways around a slow and ludite government.

I do NOT agree that it would wreck the internet, it just would put targeted ads back a few years. Other forms of advertising work just fine without tracking.
 
That's funny. Off by default unless you hit Express Settings. Almost everyone hits Express Settings at prompt - at least everyone I know does.
 
While I don't want to get into an argument about any of this (just wanted to share my opinions), I'd like to point out that most people are stuck on the word track.

When you buy anything in a store (physical store), the person helping you frequently gets a commission / sale. Even in places that don't have commissions, stores still track sales to make sure their salespeople are doing their job.

The web works in the exact same way. Now it's not the stores that are going to suffer the most... but instead the salespeople that will make sales and not be rewarded for it.

It's the advertisers that will hurt the most people stores will wrongfully assume that it's not 'paying off'.

Will people still buy online? Yeah! Of course.

But... will it screw over the people making great content for free? Yes.

Free sites (news sites, tech sites, car sites, microwave sites... you name it) that have full time staff producing high quality content will take a severe hit because the tracking that handles the performance of these content creators will be negatively impacted.

To survive, the content creators will have a few options:
- Strike up more direct deals with advertisers (which will mean more 'in your face' ads that can't be ignored)
- Paid firewalls (and we all know how well those work and are loved)
- Paid premium content everywhere.

Right now the web is great because you can get amazing, multi-million dollar content, for free (well, at the cost of looking at ads).

Remove tracking, and this will slowly change.

Unfortunately, most people won't agree, understand or believe this because "it's too big of a change" and people just take free content for granted these days. No one really thinks about where it all comes from!

It must take a day (or more) to do a hardware review, and people have full time jobs creating web content. Where do you think the money comes from?
 
killboy said:
While I don't want to get into an argument about any of this (just wanted to share my opinions), I'd like to point out that most people are stuck on the word track.

When you buy anything in a store (physical store), the person helping you frequently gets a commission / sale. Even in places that don't have commissions, stores still track sales to make sure their salespeople are doing their job.

The web works in the exact same way. Now it's not the stores that are going to suffer the most... but instead the salespeople that will make sales and not be rewarded for it.

It's the advertisers that will hurt the most people stores will wrongfully assume that it's not 'paying off'.

Will people still buy online? Yeah! Of course.

But... will it screw over the people making great content for free? Yes.

Free sites (news sites, tech sites, car sites, microwave sites... you name it) that have full time staff producing high quality content will take a severe hit because the tracking that handles the performance of these content creators will be negatively impacted.

To survive, the content creators will have a few options:
- Strike up more direct deals with advertisers (which will mean more 'in your face' ads that can't be ignored)
- Paid firewalls (and we all know how well those work and are loved)
- Paid premium content everywhere.

Right now the web is great because you can get amazing, multi-million dollar content, for free (well, at the cost of looking at ads).

Remove tracking, and this will slowly change.

Unfortunately, most people won't agree, understand or believe this because "it's too big of a change" and people just take free content for granted these days. No one really thinks about where it all comes from!

It must take a day (or more) to do a hardware review, and people have full time jobs creating web content. Where do you think the money comes from?
Click to expand...

imo you are not stuck enough on the word "track", because that is (from what I understand) the focal point.

I do agree that ads will be less effective, how much I don't know. I don't know how much of a premium content providers receive with targeted ads vs normal "dumb" ads.

no tracking means, less effective ads because they cannot target as well. Click through links are still live an well. Websites that depend on ads for income "may" get less revenue depending on how well "targeted" ads work. Here at [H] targeting isn't as much of a deal since we all know why we are here (to argue politics in news threads lol).

As you said it could lead to more "annoying" ads, but that has been happening anyways and will be controlled by customer ability to live with it.

I do not believe for a second that targeted ads based on tracking is doom or gloom for advertising on the web.

I also do not believe that all these content creators work is for naught with this DNT, as I have said before this does not effect sponsored links and I have not seen evidence that referral tracking is primarily based on tracking instead of sponsored links.
 
killboy said:
While I don't want to get into an argument about any of this (just wanted to share my opinions), I'd like to point out that most people are stuck on the word track.

When you buy anything in a store (physical store), the person helping you frequently gets a commission / sale. Even in places that don't have commissions, stores still track sales to make sure their salespeople are doing their job.

The web works in the exact same way. Now it's not the stores that are going to suffer the most... but instead the salespeople that will make sales and not be rewarded for it.

It's the advertisers that will hurt the most people stores will wrongfully assume that it's not 'paying off'.

Will people still buy online? Yeah! Of course.

But... will it screw over the people making great content for free? Yes.

Free sites (news sites, tech sites, car sites, microwave sites... you name it) that have full time staff producing high quality content will take a severe hit because the tracking that handles the performance of these content creators will be negatively impacted.

To survive, the content creators will have a few options:
- Strike up more direct deals with advertisers (which will mean more 'in your face' ads that can't be ignored)
- Paid firewalls (and we all know how well those work and are loved)
- Paid premium content everywhere.

Right now the web is great because you can get amazing, multi-million dollar content, for free (well, at the cost of looking at ads).

Remove tracking, and this will slowly change.

Unfortunately, most people won't agree, understand or believe this because "it's too big of a change" and people just take free content for granted these days. No one really thinks about where it all comes from!

It must take a day (or more) to do a hardware review, and people have full time jobs creating web content. Where do you think the money comes from?
Click to expand...

The internet worked just fine before the crazy commercialization of every aspect of it. It worked fine before Web 2.0, and it worked fine when ads were just text (or if you were special, an animated gif). People got no data back other than a hit count.

People and websites need to move to new models or get left behind and die. Adaptation is a part of life, especially technology. As things like refusal to track and ad blockers become more widespread, the people with a stake in the industry will need to work with it, not against it, to survive.
 
Any business worth its salt will continue to investigate how to best reach said clients/customers/shoppers/etc. If you can't keep up and adapt, you're in trouble, as previously mentioned.
 
Master [H];1039020453 said:
Any business worth its salt will continue to investigate how to best feign ignorance of protections and reach said clients/customers/shoppers/etc no matter what unscrupulous methods are used or how secret they need to keep them for fear of consumer lashback. If you can't keep up and adapt, you're in trouble, as previously mentioned.
Click to expand...

I fixed that for you. :)

Honestly, though, I wish every tracking company had to make transparent their methods and what they track and what they use it for. If they are 100% transparent and the majority of people are perfectly fine with that, I'd concede. It's the fact they they hide things so much and try to do it surreptitiously that makes me upset. If they weren't doing Bad/Suspect things, they wouldn't Fear the transparency.
 
I should add, it's one thing to track what demographic your product appeals to and other non-identifying things, but it's another entirely to analyze John Doe #465 (Houston, Texas 54404 at 303-555-4543)* shopping habits to deliver exact advertising to him, without him knowing it's happening.


* That's not a routable number.
 
IE10 seems to have another good feature.....it's actually usable.

IE9 just seems to never stop popping up annoying messages that never go away at the bottom. Yes yes disable disable...oh FFS go AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!
 
niconx said:
In stark contrast with Chrome OS which has a feature to track absolutely everything you click on.
Click to expand...

Bad joke I hope? Chrome does no such thing. MS, on the other hand, has been busted doing exactly that - uploading the stuff you do on other websites to MS's servers for Bing. I wonder if they will respect the DNT setting themselves - probably not, MS never plays by the rules they want others to.
 
So is the IE team malicious or just incompetent? IE6 stagnation, hopelessly broken CSS, ActiveX, P3P (and the associated FUD campaign against Google, of course), and now ruining DNT.

And just when IE was starting to finally become a somewhat usable browser, too.
 
killboy said:
Some people at Microsoft don't seem to understand the bigger picture... that the entire Internet is funded by advertisement.

Millions (ok, probably billions) is dedicated to creating free content on the web that users enjoy...
Based on tracking the users.

No advertisement... no great web content.

Here are a few examples:

Those guys that made that 10 minute video review of that crockpot you want to buy? They are funded by advertisement from Amazon.

Free nutrition guides? Funded by advertisement.
Free 'how-to' guides? Funded by advertisement.

Hardocp... Funded by advertisement.

Crippling the advertisement & referral industry by defaulting their browser (and OS... which is sneaky and monopolistic) is going to do more harm than good. What's worse is that they are going to do this without the user's understanding the real consequences.

Sure, "do not track" sounds good. It sounds like the "do not call" list so you don't get called at 9pm at night.

But it's not that. It has nothing to do with that.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you make 10 full-in depth reviews on Youtube of all the best coffee makers.... and someone buys them BECAUSE of your reviews. Then you won't be credited for your work.

-> The 'do not track' feature means that if you're an advertiser trying to figure out what ads are profitable and which ones aren't... you won't be able to do so. (When people click on an ad and purchase something at your store, you need to know where that user came from... so you can give that site more money in the future. HardOCP's business model relies on this... unless you're getting paid to do specific hardware reviews... which is possible.)

Regardless, if e-commerce stores can't track, they won't spend. If content creators can't track, they won't create content.

The 'do not track' feature isn't there to hurt people (seriously, have you ever been negatively affected by tracking?) but instead, to help improve the user experience.

What's going to happen is there's going to be a serious backlash & boycott on many sites.

You'll also have some novel companies coming up with ways to track people in spite of the 'do not track' feature... which will result in more security flaws because people will be forced to install & authorize 3rd party software / scripts.

Long term... if this was to continue, then the business model of the ENTIRE INTERNET would have to change (from free content everywhere!) to something new.
Click to expand...

You are wrong. Some people make how-to's without any funds or advertisements. I know my community at Herocraftonline.com runs completely advertising free and our users push premium content.
 
Wyodiver said:
I kind of wonder what MS is thinking. I'm not on the "hate 8" bandwagon, but 7 is just fine. I don't see a reason to ditch 7 for 8.
Click to expand...
The only big draw I can see is for touch screen/handwriting recognition. There may be other valid reasons I'm unaware of, but the screen is the reason that stands out.
 
Wyodiver said:
I kind of wonder what MS is thinking. I'm not on the "hate 8" bandwagon, but 7 is just fine. I don't see a reason to ditch 7 for 8.
Click to expand...

Well, some of the kernel, networking, and other changes are actually really cool and impressive looking - if it had 7's UI and Aero I would be all over 8 at launch. But I tried the RTM of 8, and "not Metro" just sucks.
 
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