Re: ISSUE-89: Does DNT mean at a high level: (a) no customization, users are seen for the first time, every time. (b) DNT is about data moving between sites.

Speaking IMO, not as editor ...

My preference is (b): DNT is about the user expressing that they do not want
data collected at one party's site to be provided to another party's site
or used to associate that user across different-branded sites.

A user already has an option for anonymous browsing by enabling one of the
various private browsing modes.  If they enable both DNT and private browsing,
then they receive the "no customizations" effect automatically, aside from
those limited customizations based on IP address or specifically requested
via the choice of URIs/form values.  Hence, there is no real advantage to be
gained from adding anonymous browsing limitations to DNT.

In contrast, most users do like the kind of customizations provided by
first party sites like Amazon.com.  It is actually one of the central
features of the Web products that I work on at Adobe, where it is referred
to in general as customer experience management (CEM).  If we disable
such customer experience management every time that DNT is enabled, then we
harm those users who only wanted protection from cross-party data sharing.

I don't think that DNT should attempt to solve every potential privacy
issue at once, especially for those issues that can be addressed by
combining DNT with other browser features.

....Roy

Received on Thursday, 6 October 2011 06:54:45 UTC