7mo ago

Mozilla Firefox removes "Do Not Track" Feature support: Here's what it means for your Privacy

windowsreport.com

https://windowsreport.com/mozilla-firefox-removes-do-not-track-feature-support-heres-what-it-means-for-your-privacy/

18 comments

title makes it look like firefox is just removing yet another security feature as part of its enshittification process, but reading the article it looks like it makes sense
not a lot of websites respect dnt
it might serve as an identifier, i think
- removing ~~yet another~~ security ~~feature~~ theatre.
  DNT was always just an honor system, and can be used as another data point for fingerprinting.
  
  Yeah, I'm not too mad about this. It's a good idea, but without legal weight behind it, it ultimately failed. Ideally GDPR and similar regulations would provide something similar, so I can set my preference once and every site would be required to respect it. That would be much better that the current situation, which is that I am forced to navigate every asshole site's custom cookie notice. Each one's a little different, and some of them break certain browser configurations. It's a UX nightmare. This is probably by design — annoy users into submission. Because nobody in their right mind would ever click "allow" if it were not the easier choice.
- it might serve as an identifier, i think
  It does. It's yet another data point used in fingerprinting, and not many people enable it. 'tis but a single setting, but combined with everything else they can track about your browser it is effective.
  In case you want to run a test to see how fingerprinting affects your browser:
  https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
  https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint
  
  The only way to really stop this is to disable JavaScript?
Propaganda article - they suggest moving to fucking brave browser. This was shared on the subreddit as well.
The do not track isn't followed by any websites and can identify you anyway. Yeah good call OP, let's ditch firefox for fucking brave
- Yes it is by at least one famous german website
"Will Chrome, Edge, and Other Privacy-Focused Browsers follow this move?"
And it's not The Onion.
- My head hurts
deleted by creator
Some Websites use Dnt and we know the discussion about cookie banners. We heared arguments that those are necessary to be GDPR conform. There always was the argument to establish, that sites have to respect the state of the art information 'Do not trackt' to illiminate the annoying cookie process. Now this Option is gone.
Not so smart.
And being tracked by this header? Simply activated it be default, Mozilla and there are enough users sharing the same configuration.
- Exactly, and it could surely be done. After all, they already have default opt-ins in place... opt-in "Sponsored shortcuts" by default, for example...
Not bothered by the loss. Like others have stated, it can be used to track/profile you, but far more importantly, it was a non-legally binding "pretty please, do not track me, okay?" Request. Based on literally how honestly the server was setup or if the site admins felt like respecting it. 0% guarantees.
I have not been bothering to enable this for close to a decade in all my machines and on those I support.
Always found it weird how it was so pushed in tons of privacy guides or in privacy tips. It's as if they were just parroting each other without actually thinking why it would or not work at all.
- Always found it weird how it was so pushed in tons of privacy guides or in privacy tips. It’s as if they were just parroting each other without actually thinking why it would or not work at all.
  Welcome to the internet, where blogspam is pushed to make $$ without fact checking.
What the fuck, Mozilla?

18 comments