Following the footsteps of Google and Facebook, Yahoo has announced that it will no longer be adhering to Do Not Track setting on the browser. This effectively means that regardless of whether users have enabled “Do Not Track” or not, Yahoo would just ignore such messages from here on.
Citing reasons for taking such a decision, Yahoo said that the Company believes that the best web is the personalized one only thereby hinting users to choose personalized privacy settings instead of “Do Not Track”.
Why Do Not Track is so important
“Do Not Track” is important because it is a mechanism of saving one’s privacy from online web tracking. Whenever we are browsing a website, our computers are either sending or receiving some information. This information contains our behavioral data about what we click, search and read and marketers and advertisers around the web look just for that. Once the marketers know about their consumer’s likes and needs, they can target them with specific product and services that could easily earn them a sale.
The Do Not Track header, basically tells the website you are visiting whether you would want your behavior monitored or shared with the third parties. However websites have the freedom to accept or ignore your “Do Not Track” request without penalty.
Do you agree with Yahoo’s explanation?
While the exact reason behind ending support for “Do Not Track” seems to be something else, Yahoo Privacy Team rather tried to put up a lame excuse through a blog post. They wrote,
“As of today, web browser Do Not Track settings will no longer be enabled on Yahoo. As the first major tech company to implement Do Not Track, we’ve been at the heart of conversations surrounding how to develop the most user-friendly standard. However, we have yet to see a single standard emerge that is effective, easy to use and has been adopted by the broader tech industry”.
Users could see Yahoo’s move here as a ditching one since many of the other big groups are still very much supporting “Do Not Track”. Firefox, Safari, Opera and Microsoft very much support “Do Not Track”. Microsoft even faced criticism from the advertisers around the world when in 2012 it decided to turn on “Do Not Track” by default in Internet Explorer. Indeed it was a great move by Microsoft; however same cannot be said about Yahoo today.
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