Microsoft was warned that its decision to enable Do Not Track (DNT) by default in Windows 8’s Internet Explorer 10 would encourage web content providers to ignore the request to keep advertisers from following user’s movements around the web, and those predictions are becoming very true. Yahoo has just published its thoughts on the matter, and in the blog post says that it “will not recognize IE10’s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.” The company cites that the DNT standard has not been finalized, and that Microsoft’s decision “degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them.”
Yahoo is quick to point out that ‘In principle, we support “Do Not Track,'” but ultimately, the fact remains that DNT is being flatly ignored. The move closely mimics a much more significant decision made by Apache’s co-founder in reaction to Microsoft’s move, which patched the open source server software behind about 60 percent of websites to ignore the DNT setting in Internet Explorer 10. Much like the reasoning behind the Apache co-founder’s decision to patch the software, Yahoo says that “we believe that DNT must map to user intent — not to the intent of one browser creator, plug-in writer, or third-party software service.” We’ll be keeping an eye on how this continues to develop; now the Windows 8 is officially released, we expect the debate over DNT to only intensify, and more may join in Yahoo’s decision to look past Internet Explorer 10’s defaults.
Rapide Tech 