Last week, Mozilla released details about a feature it intended to add to the upcoming version of its Firefox web browser, release 4.0, that would create a universal “opt-out” for net surfers who don’t want to be tracked by Internet marketers. Today, Sid Stamm announced on his “extreme geekboy” blog that the first iteration of the feature has been incorporated into the latest nightly builds of the browser.
To enable the feature, open the preference pane in the software, select the advanced tab and click the box labeled “Tell sites I do not want to be tracked.”
Just because a browser has a “do not track” feature, though, doesn’t mean a website will recognize it. “We do not anticipate that sites are looking for the signal yet, so you probably won’t notice a difference as you browse the web,” Stamm acknowledged.
That cooperation from both browser makers and website operators is required for “do not track” to work is seen by some as a major flaw in the system. As my colleague Tony Bradley pointed out last week:
“The problem with expecting cooperation from websites that are tracking Internet usage and gathering information on users’ web habits is that most of those organizations are already aware that it is ethically questionable, and that the FTC is working to combat the practice, yet they choose to continue collecting the data anyway.”