The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Medium, Mixpanel, Adblock, and Duckduckgo have proposed a new Do Not Track standard aimed at stemming the tide of total ad-blocking by getting publishers, trackers and advertisers to respect users' preferences.
DNT is a preference you can set on Firefox, Chrome, or other Web browsers as well as in the iOS and FirefoxOS mobile operating systems to signal to websites that you want to opt-out of tracking of your online activities. Tracking by advertisers and other third parties is commonplace on the Web today, and typically occurs without the knowledge, permission, or consent of Internet users. You can see evidence of this when ads appear around the Web that are eerily based upon your past browsing habits; meanwhile, the underlying records and profiles of your online activity are distributed between a vast network of advertising exchanges, data brokers, and tracking companies.
The new DNT standard is not an ad- or tracker-blocker, but it works in tandem with these technologies.“The failure of the ad industry and privacy groups to reach a compromise on DNT has led to a viral surge in ad blocking, massive losses for Internet companies dependent on ad revenue, and increasingly malicious methods of tracking users and surfacing advertisements online,” said Disconnect CEO Casey Oppenheim. “Our hope is that this new DNT approach will protect a consumer’s right to privacy and incentivize advertisers to respect user choice, paving a path that allows privacy and advertising to coexist.”
Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing [EFF]
