Several months after the DNT header was implemented, adoption is encouraging

Sep 9, 2011 10:10 GMT  ·  By

Online privacy has always been a concern, but it's only recently that there have been any clear moves aimed at protecting the users. Mozilla's decision to implement a Do Not Track feature is one of these moves.

Mozilla implemented a simple change in Firefox, if users select the Do Not Track option, it tells, or rather suggests to, websites to disable tracking.

It's a simple solution, but a very effective one, provided websites choose to respect it.

Now, several months after Mozilla has started supporting the feature, in Firefox 4, the group is publishing some usage stats which show that almost 5 percent of users have enabled the feature.

"Our Metrics team has been following adoption (in a privacy friendly way) over the past few months and we’re seeing almost 5 % of our user base with DNT enabled," Mozilla said.

"Another study published a few weeks ago looked at 100 million Firefox users and reported a slightly higher adoption rate of more than 6%," it said.

Mozilla is also issuing a Do Not Track (DNT) Field Guide (PDF), aimed at web developers that work with ad tools.

It includes some documentation for the feature, but also case studies and some more info on DNT and the need for this privacy option.

"Based on interactions with developers from leading companies that support DNT today, The Do Not Track Field Guide contains case studies, tutorials and sample code," Mozilla explained.

"We’ve also included a background section on our view of what the debate over DNT is all about," it added.

Do Not Track isn't a privacy feature in itself. What it does is signal to websites that the user does not want his or her profile to be stored or tracked, via tracking cookies or other means, for targeted advertising.

Ad networks, many of which offer a (rather convoluted) way of opting out of tracking, decide if they want to support the Firefox feature or not, but response among them has been good. What's more, the feature is also supported by Internet Explorer and Safari.