[ams6110]

Would hold a lot more water if it weren't a NEGATIVE affirmation, with an unreasonable default (assuming most people WANT to be tracked unless they take the trouble to tell you otherwise?)

Option should have been "Track Me", unselected by default. If a person wants to be tracked, let them say so.

[remarkEon]

I think this is definitely true. If my parents were prompted when they installed IE with an explicit message that said "Do you want to be tracked by websites you visit in Internet Explorer?" my dad's response would probably be "wtf they can do that?" and then promptly select "NO".

[derefr]

You have to assume they at least wouldn't allow the question to be presented in a straw-man manner like that; nobody would agree to being tracked if they didn't see what the point of the tracking was.

The actual positive form of the question, ignoring the politics and just thinking about user intent, would be something like "Do you want this computer to serve a unique fingerprint to websites, allowing companies to both reconstruct your identity between sites on their network, or to persist your identity after you have purged cookies and other session data? Companies tend to use this tracking ability to enhance your advertising experience, to collect statistics on the usage of their sites, and to ensure they don't double-count you. Malicious uses of this data are also possible, though currently rare."

The important bit of the question, when phrased this way, is that it doesn't just ask about a mechanism (the DNT header), but about the user's intent—and because of that, it's activation state could be made to control all sorts of things besides the DNT header. For example, saying "no" to the question should cause the browser to try to add some per-domain jitter to its answers to questions about what links are visited, what fonts are installed, what the User-Agent string is, etc., so that the browser can't be fingerprinted.

[implicitAgendas]

I don't understand your opinion regarding any kind of straw man fallacy. Can you elaborate on where the fallacy emerges?

The idea that advertising needs "enhancement" sounds suspicious. Couching the premise of the question in 77 words of pseudo-legalese-style terms and conditions would muddy the waters, and sow confusion, and probably innure users to do anything to make the checkbox go away, so they can simply get to the internet.

Politics aside, that kind of twisting and turning smells like a dark pattern, in my opinion.

[remarkEon]

I think where the straw man fallacy comes from in what I set up is that it's not the websites themselves that are doing the tracking per se...it's your computer that's letting the company running the website know that this is a unique user. Because tracking in this manner isn't specifically illegal, a terms-and-conditions-may-apply statement probably is what's necessary. My original hypothetical question likely is too simple to survive a challenge. The "77 words of pseudo-legalese" that derefr posited would also help someone like my dad truly understand what's going on in the background and, heck, may even encourage him to research the matter more. Hopefully on a browser set to Do-Not-Track.

[hackuser]

> nobody would agree to being tracked if they didn't see what the point of the tracking was.

An excellent point. It's like asking, "do you want to pay $100?" or "do you want to pay higher taxes?" without indicating the benefits you receive in return.

[bobajeff]

Yeah this. Exactly. This is what DNT attempt 2.0 should be.

"Do you want Ad agencies to gather and possibly share with or sell to their partners about your browsing activity?"

[rsuelzer]

Unfortunately, at least two of the major browsers are also run by major advertising and tracking firms. There is an inherit conflict of interest here.

[realityking]

I may just be very slow right now (it's late, a holiday, and I had too much to eat), but who, besides Google, are you referring to?

[rsuelzer]

Microsoft & Google. Not Apple, but certainly not for a lack of trying.

[dragonwriter]

Well, Apple tried to be a major advertising firm (and still tries) with iAd.

Though I don't know that I'd say that they are such a firm.

[freehunter]

Bing Ads.