RE: tracking-ISSUE-183 (Tk E ): Additional Tk header status value for EU [Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)]

Here's Mike's proposal:
http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/track/issues/182


cheers
Fred

From: ifette@google.com
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:54:26 -0700
Subject: Re: tracking-ISSUE-183 (Tk E ): Additional Tk header status value for EU [Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)]
To: fredandw@live.com
CC: public-tracking@w3.org

I did not see that proposal from Mike nor do I agree to that proposal, so I don't see how that "makes this irrelevant now"

-Ian

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 5:45 PM, Fred Andrews <fredandw@live.com> wrote:





I don't care if the site thinks it 1st or 3rd party.

I do expect the site to correctly inform the browser if it conforms
to the 1st or 3rd party requirements and I do expected some browsers


to want to block resources that do not meet their expectation.

Keep in mind that Mike has already proposed  that the UA can request
a resource to conform to the 1st or 3rd party requirements irrespective
of what the site thinks of its resources so this is irrelevant now.



cheers
Fred


From: ifette@google.com
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:58:57 -0700
Subject: Re: tracking-ISSUE-183 (Tk E ): Additional Tk header status value for EU [Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)]


To: fredandw@live.com
CC: public-tracking@w3.org



It's not clear why this matters. You say you support DNT. That's all that should matter, unless you expect the browser to do something differently depending on  whether the site thinks it's a first or third party. I don't expect the browser to do anything differently. What do you mean by "defend the users tracking preference?"




-Ian

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Fred Andrews <fredandw@live.com> wrote:








'Yes, I support DNT' is not a clear answer as currently defined.

Does this mean 'Yes, I support DNT and conform to the 1st party requirements'
or does it mean 'Yes, I support DNT and conform to the 3rd party requirements'?





User agents do have a real need for a specific answer so they can defend the
users tracking preference.  Mike has also mentioned concern about EU requirements.

cheers
Fred

From: ifette@google.com




Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:02:37 -0700
To: michael.oneill@baycloud.com
CC: fielding@gbiv.com; npdoty@w3.org; public-tracking@w3.org




Subject: Re: tracking-ISSUE-183 (Tk E ): Additional Tk header status value for  EU [Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)]

I still don't understand the need for this. The server should simply state "Yes, I support DNT" or "No, I don't support DNT" (or alternately "Yes, I'm honoring your request" or "No, I'm not honoring your request.")






By creating this desire for the server to differentiate between parties, we've created this rathole that has turned into multiple over-long threads. There is no fundamental need for this. If someone feels that their request has been improperly handled, they are free to dig into all of this offline. As a browser, I have no intention of doing anything with this data, thus I don't see why there is any need. We are just over-complicating the protocol.






Personally, this has gotten to a level of unnecessary complexity where I believe it would hurt adoption and as a result would vote against its inclusion in the protocol. I think we should go back to a simple "Yes I'm honoring your request" or "No I'm not honoring your request" 1/0 approach. Any additional information can be spelled out in the tracking resource document if someone chooses but need not be included in every response.






-Ian
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Mike O'Neill <michael.oneill@baycloud.com> wrote:






Ian,


 
I would agree with you if we don’t have to differentiate between parties, but as it is we need to have a way for resources (handlers, what have you) to indicate what they claim to be.






 
If there was no difference all we would need would be a status resource reporting compliance with the spec.






 
Thanks for pointing out the https/http problem with the Referer header, I forgot to mention that in my reply to Roy.






 
Mike






 
 






From: Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ) [mailto:ifette@google.com] 






Sent: 23 October 2012 22:15
To: Roy T. Fielding
Cc: Mike O'Neill; Nicholas Doty; public-tracking@w3.org Group WG



Subject: Re: tracking-ISSUE-183 (Tk E ): Additional Tk header status value for EU [Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)]
 


On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:






On Oct 23, 2012, at 3:15 AM, Mike O'Neill wrote:







> The point about particular resource URIs changing from 3rd to 1st party
> context is one of the reasons for the change I suggested in issue-182. The
> user-agent has the party information at hand when it sends out a request,






> and it would be simple for it to communicate this to the server in the DNT
> header.No, it does not.  The fact is that neither the browser nor the server






knows what requests are first party and what requests are third party.
Just clicking on a link doesn't make it the first party -- the identifier
would have to be compared to the contextual user information (the






information that gave the user the idea that they wanted to click
on that link).

In theory, the only way we could mechanically distinguish between
first and third party references would be to change the URIs






(not going to happen) or add additional metadata to the mark-up to
indicate which is which; in practice, we already know that authors
won't correctly mark-up such links, and I suspect TLR would be
somewhat upset if I started redefining HTML here.







Of course, this has no impact on enforcement of the standard.
The people building Web sites know which links are to third parties,
even if they don't have a special mark-up.
Regulators are fully capable of distinguishing between where they






intend to visit and other entities that might be performing data
collection -- a simple browser extension or protocol stream capture
will reveal all they need to know, and is easily packaged as a tool.







> For example the handler associated with a social widget will
> normally receive a request indicating 3rd party context usage ( DNT: 1) and






> the handler will return Tk3. If a user clicks on it a request will be sent
> out with the f qualifier ( DNT: 1f)  and the handler can return a Tk1
> response if it now conforms to 1st party rules.
>






> In the DNT = 0 case the exception API will have been called. In a 3rd party
> context the DNT header would now be DNT: 0t=toplevel.com indicating the
> document origin of the top level page, which is also the origin host which






> initiated the exception. This can be used to prove compliance (by retaining
> logs in the DNT:0 case) or to debug script errors on the top level site.





HTTP already has Referer header fields.

....Roy







 
Referer is not sent though with https if the site is on a different origin.






 
Stepping back though, we're spending a lot of time defining all of these more complex response codes, has anyone expressed any interest in using them? I believe this is already more complex than we have any interest in using, and wonder if others are in a similar position.






 
-Ian