[Majestic121]

I understand the view and pains of the webdeveloper, but quite frankly I think privacy issues are way more important. Not even in the same order of magnitude.

Your comment feels like a restaurant saying 'Ok, I understand cleanliness is important, but as a cook washing dishes all the time is really annoying so I only wash them if customers ask for clean dishes'

[ioulian]

Haha, good one, but joking aside, I would rather prefer that the dishes can never get dirty, no matter what.

I don't think it's in Google best interest to add anti tracking features into Chrome browser (and same with MS and Apple). So for now on we must bring our own cloth to clean out the dishes or go to another restaurant where the dishes are always clean.

The problem is that it's impossible to change the current behaviour of the browsers without breaking the whole internet. It would be much easier and better to create a new browser (look at Tor Browser for example), that has a lot of anti tracking features enabled by default.

People know that if they want privacy, they can use this browser. But it's still a "big" hassle to install it, not to mention my grandmother knows Chrome/Firefox, but not Tor Browser so she will never use it.

We do not need to change the browsers to let them defend us, but to teach folk what privacy is and what to do if you don't want to get tracked.

PS: keep in mind that browser is 1 item in the big picture of "tracking private data". IoT devices are really booming now, and everything is tracking us, our watches, refrigerators, thermostats, ... we can't just install a AdBlocker there.

[Silhouette]

The problem is that it's impossible to change the current behaviour of the browsers without breaking the whole internet.

That just doesn't track, sorry.

For one thing, plenty of sites would continue to work just fine if browsers (for example) wouldn't allow any JS to upload anything without the user's explicit consent. That would immediately solve a significant part of the problem, for a cost of one click the first time a user visits a site where they do want to allow it.

For another thing, web developers respond plenty quick enough to new opportunities to exploit browser functionality. If the major browser developers told them where to go, they'd fix their broken sites plenty quickly too.

IoT devices are really booming now, and everything is tracking us, our watches, refrigerators, thermostats, ... we can't just install a AdBlocker there.

Maybe they're booming where you are. I've yet to see anyone, from my most gadget-obsessed geek friends to my least technical family members, actually use one, other than devices specifically made for some communications purpose or whose main/only function is to provide access to some remote service. Certainly I've yet to meet anyone who thought everyday household appliances like their fridge or thermostat needed to phone home to do their jobs.

As for installing a blocker, I've already seen multiple places interested in implementing something that is essentially a privacy firewall for home devices and/or building a database of which devices try to communicate with which remote hosts for which purposes. If IoT really does outgrow the marketing hype, tools to limit its capabilities for privacy and security reasons will surely follow, maybe even at ISP level in the same way that a lot of spam no longer even reaches our junk folders.

[wtbob]

> Haha, good one, but joking aside, I would rather prefer that the dishes can never get dirty, no matter what.

Using JavaScript to deploy content-focused websites is like a restaurant which uses its cookpots for urinals: sure, it can be done hygienically, but it's Just Wrong.

[adrianN]

The majority of the web works fine without any Javascript at all.