Headers modified along the way against user (non) choices

On the call today, we discussed about user choice on setting the DNT header.
(Thinking out loud, not a strong opinion)

Basically the header sets 

	DNT: 1 

and along the way a proxy modified the header for

	DNT: 0 

the final server knows only the last value and then might not be able to behave according to user choices.

* CGI
  Roy proposed on IRC to have a cgi script on the final server 
  displaying what headers it has received. Issues because it 
  means the user has to understand what is happening. 

* Echo
  another possibility would be having the server sending back 
  in the response a header with the original DNT header. 
  Server sending something like (not the formal syntax)
  DNT-received: 0
  This has issues too. Ian Fette will say too heavy?
  And a proxy can still modify it on the way back too.





-- 
Karl Dubost - http://dev.opera.com/
Developer Relations & Tools, Opera Software

Received on Wednesday, 9 November 2011 18:25:34 UTC