Re: Comments in response to the W3C’s request for public review of the W3C Last Call Working Draft of the Tracking Preference Expression (DNT) dated 24 April 2014

Hi Mr. Levenfeld and Ms. Covington,

Thank you for your comments (last June) on the TPE Last Call Working Draft.

While we appreciate your candid comments, the issues you raise are not new to the group; they have been previously discussed in great detail and resolved by consensus of the working group.

The definition of tracking has been resolved by the group; you do not put forward new information or a proposal to remedy any perceived problem in this definition.

You criticize the clarity and ease of use of the Do Not Track mechanism without elaboration, and propose no language to resolve these issue.

The definitions of context and parties have also been resolved by the group; no new information and no proposal has been presented to re-open these issues.

The TPE provides transparency mechanisms to allow servers to convey back to the user agent whether and how they respond to DNT:1 signals.

The issue of authenticating DNT signals has also been addressed; as part of the Last Call review process, we considered Shane Wiley’s proposal to require identification of the party setting a DNT signal within the header; this proposal was rejected by the group.

See also: TPE Last Call comments, re: validation of user signals (issue-260)
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-tracking-comments/2015Jun/0008.html

Please let us know whether these explanations resolve your concerns.

Thanks,
Nick Doty, W3C
(for Tracking Protection Working Group Co-Chairs: Carl, Justin and Matthias)