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A comment on "Do Not Track" HTTP header supported by IE, Opera, FF, Safari but not Chrome. Parent comment

Re:"Do Not Track" HTTP header supported by IE, Opera, FF, Sa... by jiggy2011 on Sunday May 20, 2012 @07:03PM (#4000423)
From a technical point of view it has little merit, granted.

I think from a legal point of view though , you are expressing your desire to not be tracked.

This would be preferable to legislation dictating that the user must manually approve all cookies etc.

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Re:"Do Not Track" HTTP header supported by IE, Opera, FF, Sa... by throwaway55-33 on Sunday May 20, 2012 @09:12PM (#4000827)
"you are expressing your desire to not be tracked."

Yes. And I think this is important. For example, for cases brought by the FTC, class actions, and other litigation it might be useful.

If a company ignores the Header sent by the user and tracks her anyway, then one could argue the company too has expressed an intent.

The Header is machine readable like any other. A server can parse it and take a specific action based on its presence or absence. Arguably it does have technical merit.

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