Re: Tracking Preference Expression Spec Suggestion

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the note. I'm not entirely sure I understand the suggestion: is the idea that the header mechanism could be used to send DNT:0 to certain sites (even when Do Not Track was not broadly enabled) to indicate consent for tracking? I believe that possibility is covered in part by "6.6 Exceptions without a DNT header" http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/drafts/tracking-dnt.html#exceptions-when-not-enabled

Or are you thinking of the opposite situation: that a user might not have expressed a general Do Not Track preference for all their web browsing, but still want to send DNT:1 in some situations? I believe that's also compatible with the current text of the specification, but maybe that isn't clear to readers (or perhaps others in the Working Group even disagree).

Thanks,
Nick

On Apr 12, 2012, at 12:46 PM, Andy K wrote:

> Hello all - Andy Kahl, product manager with Evidon here. I've been following the progress of the Tracking Protection Expression specification closely, and let me thank the group from the start for the quality work you've done.
> 
> I have a suggestion that relates to section 6 (working from the 2012-03-13 working draft), titled Site-specific Exceptions. This section generally deals with the notion that the DNT preference has been enabled in a browser and an exception should be made - that is - DNT is set to 1 by policy but should be set to 0 in a specific case.
> 
> However, there is no opposite exception discussed - that is - if no previous DNT preference has been expressed, but a user would like to send a DNT expression to a specific site/domain. I propose that this notion of DNT inclusion (rather than exception), available whether or not they've made prior user-agent policy decisions,  be captured in the document. This woud enable (and encourage) context-based solutions like the platform Evidon provides to adopt the DNT header along with current cookie-based opt-outs, without relying on the user to make a top-level browser configuration decision about DNT.
> 
> It appears that many of the lower-level implementation questions around a concept like this are left to those who would execute (that is, the browser manufacturers), so I'll refrain from making those kinds of suggestions here. Please let me know if more detail along those lines is appropriate.
> 
> Thanks again for your hard work, and in advance for your consideration.
> 
> /ak
> 
> Andy Kahl
> Senior Product Manager
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