So if I set the DNT flag on my browser, your advertising network will neither set any cookies nor serve me any beacons or tracking pixels nor collect any other analytics data from me whatsoever?

Can I or a neutral third party audit your internal database to verify that my browsing history is not being recorded by you? Do you provide a list of all third parties with which you share information with so I can attempt to audit them as well?

What dispute resolution procedures do you support if I have reason to believe that you do, in fact, hold some of my personal information despite my express request? How would you respond to a request to purge an individual's records from your logs?

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I don't mean to put you, personally, on the spot. I'm sure your firm is perfectly ethical, and that you do listen for and take some action to honor DNT requests as far as you see fit. I'm also sure that were I at an advertising firm I wouldn't have any better policies. It's not your fault this is a stupid feature.

That said, to almost anyone outside the webdev community "Do Not Track" doesn't mean, "Track, but Anonymize" or "Track, but Don't Personalize", it means "Don't Create A Record I Was Here". I've yet to run across a single company, advertising or otherwise, that interprets it that way, though.

You can pretty much check it yourself. Enable dnt, visit a site, and see if tracking pixels fire (in ghostery). Disable dnt and do the same.

I'd bet nobody respects dnt like that, but you can still check. Obviously if they want to be shady they can get around this too.

blekko did interpret DNT that way, because I made it do so. I'm sure we weren't/aren't the only example.

Kudos to you. (Though I'd like to ask, do you respect it in the common sense way by not storing any information about a DNT user or in the DAA sense - i.e. "we understand 'do not track' as 'do track but only show untargeted advertising'"?)

However, I'm more concerned about the hundreds of other services that might not. My point was that DNT requires cooperation from a huge number of actors to be effective, with the actors having no incentive to play along and nothing to fear if they don't.

Oh well in that case I'm no longer concerned /s

Posted 1 minute ago and already downvoted. I think it's a valid remark (even if it's sarcastic/cynical): the parent could have given some more information about why it is so, rather than just stating what any representative of such a company would say as well.

It's hardly a valid point because (a) nobody in their right mind would take his word for it and (b) even if what he said were demonstrably true, that would just mean he doesn't work for a scummy company.

His comment in no way responds to the main argument, here, which is that there exist many scummy companies who ignore DNT.