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[ NNSquad ] Re: Yahoo will ignore Do Not Track for IE10 users


On 10/27/2012 5:14 AM, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> This is the right way to deal with varying browser capabilities, too.  Then browser ID strings can fade away, having outlived any useful purpose.

Except... what do you do when a terminal (or a browser) says that it 
supports capability X, but does something completely non-standard with it?

That's the situation with IE10: it presents the "Do not track" header by 
default, when the standard says that "Do not track" shall be off by default.

I'm not sure just what M$oft thinks they are doing here. I can't imagine 
what commercial value M$ thinks they will gain from making the web less 
useful.

The web runs off of advertising.  "Tracking" makes that advertising more 
valuable and means that more expensive content can be served. So the 
idea was that people who really care will set "DO not track", and they 
will have some information about them (parts of their browsing history) 
a little bit more protected, and the web can continue to operate because 
most users won't care enough to change the setting.

Of course, if enough users turn on "do not track", web designers may 
respond in various ways: making only a subset of the site available, 
charging for access, or perhaps displaying a page telling people that 
the site can only be used with tracking enabled, and how to turn off "Do 
not track" in various browsers.

If I were running a commercial website, I might simply refuse to serve 
content to IE10.  That would make IE10 a huge success... NOT!

What comes to my mind is a famous story that thriller director Alfred 
Hitchcock used in the 50s to introduce a commercial:

"When I was in college, my Uncle Frank used to take me out for dinner 
now and then. We`d go to an expensive restaurant, and while we ate, 
Uncle Frank would tell me these long, boring stories about himself. But 
no matter how boring or self-serving the stories were, I always listened 
politely, because, after all, Uncle Frank was paying for the dinner. Now 
I don`t know what reminded me of all this, but it`s time for a commercial."
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