Re: ISSUE-125: Finding out whether a user agent supports DNT

Hi Nick, I can't recall my involvement in this request, but in general i
wasn't concerned about requesting exceptions even where there is no header.
shane, what is the context in which this is relevant/important?


On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 4:06 AM, Nicholas Doty <npdoty@w3.org> wrote:

> I drafted a brief section in response to this request (which I think was
> coming primarily from Shane and Sean); that was ACTION-122.
>
> 6.6 Exceptions without a DNT header
>
> Sites might wish to request exceptions even when a user arrives without a
> DNT header. Users might wish to grant affirmative permission to tracking on
> or by certain sites even without expressing general tracking preferences.
>
> User
> agents may instantiate NavigatorDoNotTrack.requestSiteSpecificTrackingException even
> when navigator.doNotTrack is null. Sites should test for the existence
> of requestSiteSpecificTrackingException before calling the method. If an
> exception is granted in this context and the user-agent stores that
> preference, a user agent may send a DNT:0 header even if a tracking
> preference isn't expressed for other requests. Persisted
> preferences may also affect which header is transmitted if a user later
> chooses to express a tracking preference.
>
> Note: Users might not configure their agents to have simple values for
> DNT, but use different browsing modes or other contextual information to
> decide on a DNT value. What algorithm a user agent employs to determine DNT
> values (or the lack thereof) is out of the scope of this specification.
>
>
>
> http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/drafts/tracking-dnt.html#exceptions-when-not-enabled
>
> If we're happy with that text as a response, then I think we can close
> this as having resolved the issue. Shane and Sean, does this text work for
> you? If not, would you like to take an action to write a counter-proposal
> or detail the use cases that this doesn't work for?
>
> Thanks,
> Nick
>



-- 
Sean Harvey
Business Product Manager
Google, Inc.
212-381-5330
sharvey@google.com