14 DAY TRIAL // This should come as no surprise to anyone, but Do Not Track is essentially dead. The technology was designed to provide users with a choice in how their browsing habits are tracked for targeted ad purposes.
But the various privacy groups and industry representatives involved in the discussion haven't been able to come to an agreement over how Do Not Track should work (specifically, over how websites should interpret user choice) for two years now.
The Digital Advertising Alliance, representing industry interests, has announced that it is quitting talks in the World Wide Web Consortium working group for Do Not Track (DNT). Several representatives of privacy groups had already abandoned the discussion.
As it stands, the Tracking Protection Working group is done for, and DNT, as envisioned by Mozilla, will never see the light of day, even if it is supported by all major browsers.
The technology was supposed to give users some power over how their data was tracked and used. They could choose to signal, via HTTP headers sent by their browser, that they did not want to be tracked. Complying sites would have to honor the request and not place any tracking cookies or use any other data gathering techniques.
But this reliance on advertisers complying with the request was the technology's Achilles' heel, since browsers had no way of enforcing the user choice.
It didn't help that advertisers had a different take on what "not tracking" meant. For them, a user choosing the "do not track" option simply meant that they would not get personalized ads, or ads that weren't as personalized, and not that tracking cookies wouldn't be used at all. Obviously, that's not what most people would expect to happen.
The DAA now plans to create its own browser technology to give users some choice in ad tracking. Meanwhile, Mozilla is looking into blocking all third-party cookies in Firefox, like Safari has always done, attracting the ire of the ad industry.
Earlier today, rumors of Google planning to replace tracking cookies altogether with a new AdID also surfaced. Government regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been looking into laws and regulations which would mandate something similar to Do Not Track.