There is a piece of good news from Mozilla team about adding DNT (Do Not track) feature in Firefox 4 beta 11 version. This post is a continuation from one of my previous post anticipating the introduction of a Firefox feature which prevents websites from Tracking User Activities. At that time it was not sure whether Firefox may implement it or not but they have added it in the latest release. It will prevent websites and other third-party ad servers from picking browsing activities if the user enabled Do Not Track in his browser. Now let us check how this feature works.
The basic implementation of Do Not Track is explained below.
Step 1: User Enables DNT
Step 2: Firefox sent DNT to Websites and Ads server
Step 3: Websites respond by providing content without tracking user behavior.
Step 4: Ads server serves non-personalized ads without tracking user behavior.
It may be not so happy news for advertisement companies and publishes because DNT will force them to show unrelated ads on a web page. For example, if an online advertisement server cannot scan the interests of a particular user, he will see a standard ads unit which may not be in his interests. This will reduce the CTR (Click Through Rate) and the earning of the publisher and Advertisement company.
The major difficulty in implementing DNT is whether third-party websites and ads servers respect this signal or not. Right now there is no way to forcefully stop third party servers from gathering user activities. However, I really appreciate this feature though there is no cent percent guarantee of the result. I encourage you to start using it. If you want to download Firefox beta version, go to the link below.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/
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How Do Not Track works in Firefox
The basic implementation of Do Not Track is explained below.
Step 1: User Enables DNT
Step 2: Firefox sent DNT to Websites and Ads server
Step 3: Websites respond by providing content without tracking user behavior.
Step 4: Ads server serves non-personalized ads without tracking user behavior.
It may be not so happy news for advertisement companies and publishes because DNT will force them to show unrelated ads on a web page. For example, if an online advertisement server cannot scan the interests of a particular user, he will see a standard ads unit which may not be in his interests. This will reduce the CTR (Click Through Rate) and the earning of the publisher and Advertisement company.
Technical Difficulty with Implementing Do Not Track feature
The major difficulty in implementing DNT is whether third-party websites and ads servers respect this signal or not. Right now there is no way to forcefully stop third party servers from gathering user activities. However, I really appreciate this feature though there is no cent percent guarantee of the result. I encourage you to start using it. If you want to download Firefox beta version, go to the link below.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/
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1 Comments
DNT header is by far the best proposal for opt-out of behavioral advertising.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to check if a website or your browser implements DNT, enter it at
http://trackingme.org
The site will scan for embedded tracking sites in the html and also test if it responds to the dnt header.