What's the point of using your browser's "Do- Not -Track" setting?

Judging by the frenzied claims of lawmakers like US representative Jackie Speier, enabling the Do Not Track feature ranks up there with locking doors and shredding credit card statements. “People have a right to surf the web without Big Brother watching their every move and announcing it to the world,” Speier said last February,when she introduced a bill to regulate online tracking.

DNT settings, which ask ad networks and the websites you visit not to track you, are the brainchild of security and privacy rabble-rouser Christopher Soghoian. His idea was to port the functionality of the Do Not Call list to the Internet, without forcing users to figure out cookies or register their computers in a national database. Firefox, IE9, and Safari all offer the option.

But none of that really matters, since the setting has no legal muscle. Websites are free to ignore it. And they do. As of June, only five had pledged to follow it—the Associated Press plus four of the hundreds of behavior-tracking ad networks whose raison d’èAtre is figuring out how you view the web.

“Companies are building detailed dossiers on consumers based on their browsing behavior,” Soghoian says. “The DNT header protects you by sending a clear, unambiguous signal that you don’t want to be tracked.”


Link: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/pr_burning_donottrack/