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Browser ‘Do Not Track’ is Worthless

October 17, 2018

You might think that enabling the 'do not track' feature of your browser would stop a website from tracking you. I love how Gizmodo describes the feature. "Do Not Track" is like spray-on sunscreen, a product that makes you feel safe while doing little to actually protect you. In other words…don't bother. Apparently, only a handful of sites actually respect the request. The vast majority of sites ignore the request. Yahoo and Twitter originally respected 'do not track' requests, but subsequently abandoned it. Facebook never respected the setting to begin with. Shocker.

Jonathan Mayer, an assistant computer science professor at Princeton University said, "It is, in many respects, a failed experiment. There's a question of whether it's time to declare failure, move on, and withdraw the feature from web browsers." Mayer spent four years of his life promoting the existence of "Do Not Track" so his statement is a big deal. I see the "Do Not Track" request in the same way as someone requesting a message recall in Outlook. Nobody will return a message you sent in error and making the request draws special attention.

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