Apple Removes Useless 'Do Not Track' Feature From Latest Beta Versions of Safari

[nutmac]

Except, that's not true.

Try this test for tracking / browser uniqueness.

Without extensions, none of the browsers offer full protection. But to Apple's credit, Safari seems a tad superior to Chrome and Firefox to me.

I just tried it with all 3 major browsers, plus latest Safari beta, all with built-in privacy features turned on (no 3rd party extensions):

Apple Safari 12.0.3

• Is your browser blocking tracking ads? partial protection
• Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? partial protection
• Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called "acceptable" ads whitelist? yes
• Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? no
• Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? your browser has a unique fingerprint

Apple Safari Technology Preview Release 75

• Is your browser blocking tracking ads? partial protection
• Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? partial protection
• Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called "acceptable" ads whitelist? yes
• Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? no
• Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? your browser has a unique fingerprint

Google Chrome 72.0.3626.96

• Is your browser blocking tracking ads? partial protection
• Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? partial protection
• Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called "acceptable" ads whitelist? no
• Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? no
• Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? your browser has a unique fingerprint

Mozilla Firefox 65.0

• Is your browser blocking tracking ads? partial protection
• Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? partial protection
• Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called "acceptable" ads whitelist? no
• Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? no
• Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? your browser has a unique fingerprint

 

[Aston441]

I would like JavaScript to be off by default. JavaScript is the most annoying thing to happen to humanity in the last ten years.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I actually thought Do Not Track was a good idea at the time. Sure, advertisers didn't have to honor it, but they had incentive to. Few people turned it on, so advertisers wouldn't have a significant revenue loss in honoring it and it would boost their reputations. It could have even been a precursor to something with a bit more teeth, where governments could write laws criminalizing tracking such people. It would hardly have cured us of the growing threat to user privacy, but it would have at least done something about it. It was a rare moment where it looked like scummy advertisers and privacy advocates could actually come to some sort of positive agreement, however small.

The problem with it was that it all hinged on the option being disabled by default, so that only the rare unicorns who actually knew about it and wanted it would turn it on. Microsoft made the infuriating decision to blatantly violate this delicate contract by making Do Not Track enabled by default in Internet Explorer. So all that could happen from there was for the whole thing to come tumbling down. I vaguely remember some website trying to create a compromise where they would still honor the header if it came from a non-Microsoft browser, but I guess that kind of duct tape over the mess wasn't sustainable. Advertisers were spooked and it all ended sadly-ever-after.

While IE may have quickened it’s demise I think it simply revealed the fundamental problem of this feature, which was that it was not a setting so much as it was a non-binding suggestion. It was clear that the worst of the data privacy offenders (on a significant commercial scale) that this originally targeted like Facebook or Google could and would track users via many means like crosssite cookies and digital fingerprinting regardless of this being on. Sites that took this seriously like Medium were sites that did not track users much anyways. It was a good idea, but it didn’t have anything concrete behind it to enforce it in the real world.

 

[warp9]

Get a Pi Hole. Job done.

Right. I'll let you explain to the millions of people with smartphones on LTE what a Pi Hole is.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I would like JavaScript to be off by default. JavaScript is the most annoying thing to happen to humanity in the last ten years.

It’s also the thing that makes much of the internet run well. There are so many things that you don’t see behind the scenes that require javascript to load and operate. It’s almost as old as the modern internet at 23 years old.

 

[tehabe]

In the EU the discussion around the ePrivacy Regulation is currently stalled but in the idea was to use browser settings to decide about consent. Though removing DNT would weaken the idea or browser based consent. So I don't think this is a good idea.

 

[cerote]

Won't stop tracking or fingerprinting.

Cuts down on ads, absolutely.

I have one.

Have one also. When I do leave the house to places with waiting and I play games it is amazing how many terrible placed ads things have. If I know I have to wait long like car service or something I vpn into network to help some browsing.

 

[KPandian1]

Yup, the world of (ad-free) illusion is removed with this. So, what is Pi Hole?

Has anyone tried this aggressively to prevent cookies, by having opt-out cookies instead?

https://www.networkadvertising.org/

 

[slythfox]

This is perhaps a premature move given that the W3C working group for DNT only ended their charter last month and the FTC has also backpeddled on its own "fair information practice principles" leaving behind no 21st century privacy legislation. The US is left with weak and non-existent sectoral laws compared to GDPR's broad legislation. Websites implementing DNT aren't limited to the US and it's not like the DNT specification has disappeared. Maybe we should come up with a solution first before removing the old

 

[Skeptical.me]

Instead we got a million GDPR and cookie popups

I wished that Safari had the "I don't care about Cookies" extension.

 

[triptolemus]

Yup, the world of (ad-free) illusion is removed with this. So, what is Pi Hole?

I run a Pi-hole on my network and block over 2.9 million advertising, tracking, and malicious domains. Pi-hole functions as a DNS server on your local network and matches DNS lookups to block lists. If a bad domain is found matching your block list, the IP address of the server is returned as your local Pi-hole instead of the bad IP, which as you might guess, results in the nefarious content being inaccessible on all of your network devices.

Pi-hole can also be run on a cloud hosted solution provided it is not allowed to remain open to the internet (restrict access by IP). Such a set up is vulnerable to becoming part of a DNS amplification attack. However, properly configured, this provides an option for all the smart ass comments about using Pi-hole on LTE or whatever.

https://pi-hole.net

Double your money and you can run Unbound alongside Pi-hole and stop talking to upstream DNS servers (Google, Cloudflare, ISP), too, and talk directly to the authoritative servers instead.

It's no longer a question of simply blocking ads. It's about privacy and network security at this point, too.

 

[warp9]

The whole feature is ridiculous anyways. It's like putting a sign on your car that says "Please don't steal this car".

 

[tehabe]

The whole feature is ridiculous anyways. It's like putting a sign on your car that says "Please don't steal this car".

It is more like a sign "No ads" on your letterbox. This just proves that internet companies are simply not able to police themselves.

 

[fairuz]

`127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net`
How about every Mac come with this line in /etc/hosts

Same people that complain about the headphone jack, ethernet port, and the cd-rom drive being deprecated will also complain about this, and then comment how innovative it is to remove the do not track functionality and that "Timmy is greedy."

What else is new.

Have you found anyone complaining yet?
[doublepost=1549527484][/doublepost]

The whole feature is ridiculous anyways. It's like putting a sign on your car that says "Please don't steal this car".

Websites do have robots.txt that does something similar. "Please don't send bots to my site." Many crawlers don't care, but at least Google does. But Google doesn't care about "do not track."
[doublepost=1549527541][/doublepost]

I would like JavaScript to be off by default. JavaScript is the most annoying thing to happen to humanity in the last ten years.

You'd not be able to use MacRumors forums then. Though I hate the JS language and wish it never existed, I can't just disable JS and expect anything to work.
[doublepost=1549527691][/doublepost]

Except that Chrome is sending every site you visit to Google, the biggest tracker of them all.

Safari is sending all site info to Google also, if you have "Warn when visiting a fraudulent website" enabled under Preferences > Security. Disable that for sure. It uses Google "Safe" Browsing to do that.

I'm not a privacy-minded person, but I do refuse to use Chrome, especially in Windows where they scan all your files as an "antivirus" feature. Puts it right in the malware bin for me.

 

[WatchFromAfar]

Glad they did this - it was such a misleading option (in reality) one had to wonder if it was pushed forward by advertisers / trackers in the first place to give users a false sense of security.

What about the web-sites that previously acknowledged this feature who are now free to track you like a dog?

 

[pika2000]

Can anyone recommend a good ad blocker for Safari On the Mac? Ever since Apple decided to remove them as extensions on safari, I don’t know if the ones on the App Store are good or not. The ones that I tried either break sites (and it’s seemingly impossible to whitelist) or doesn’t work at all.

 

[makr]

Can anyone recommend a good ad blocker for Safari On the Mac? Ever since Apple decided to remove them as extensions on safari, I don’t know if the ones on the App Store are good or not. The ones that I tried either break sites (and it’s seemingly impossible to whitelist) or doesn’t work at all.

I use 1Blocker, both on MacOS and iOS, working good so far.

 

[gnasher729]

Wow, so the do not track feature was used by ad companies to fingerprint you? These companies know no bounds

I suggest a "John Doe" option. When selected, the browser will make sure that any website sees the exact same information from you as for any other "John Doe". Like millions of people, all with the exact same finger print.

 

[Stella]

I assume you are using some kind of adblock plugin with Chrome.

Nope.

 

[pika2000]

Great site!

According this site, Chrome offers better protection than Safari...

Safari:
Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ⚠ partial protection
Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ⚠ partial protection
Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called “acceptable ads” whitelist? ✓ yes
Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no
Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗
your browser has a unique fingerprint

Chrome:

Test Result
Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ✓ yes
Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ✓ yes
Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called “acceptable ads” whitelist? ✓ yes
Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no
Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗
your browser has a unique fingerprint

Interesting.

This is what I get from my Chrome browser on the Mac. No extensions.

Test Result
Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ⚠ partial protection
Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ✗ no
Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called “acceptable ads” whitelist? ✗ no
Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no
Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗
your browser has a unique fingerprint

Wonder why the discrepancy. Are you sure you are actually using Chrome?

This is my result on my Brave browser, which does match your "Chrome" browser.
Test Result
Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ✓ yes
Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ✓ yes
Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called “acceptable ads” whitelist? ✓ yes
Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no
Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗
your browser has a unique fingerprint

So I'll give the credit to Brave, not Chrome.

 

[Dave-Z]

Websites do have robots.txt that does something similar. "Please don't send bots to my site." Many crawlers don't care, but at least Google does. But Google doesn't care about "do not track."

A web admin creating a robots file helps search engines index the content better and therefore deliver more relevant results to the user, which causes the user to use that search engine more frequently, which leads to more ad revenue. Not tracking the user doesn't help the search engine because it limits the information about the user so ads cannot be sold.

It's completely self-serving on the part of Google (and others).

Can anyone recommend a good ad blocker for Safari On the Mac? Ever since Apple decided to remove them as extensions on safari, I don’t know if the ones on the App Store are good or not. The ones that I tried either break sites (and it’s seemingly impossible to whitelist) or doesn’t work at all.

As mentioned, 1Blocker (Mac) is the way to go, and 1Blocker X (iOS).

 

[doctor-don]

To put things into perspective, the so called evil is advertisers setting cookies to track users browsing behavior. The "ultimate evil", the end game, the devil, is an AD that pops up on some page you visit that some algorithm calculated you might be interested in. Oh the horror.
(Yet everyone watches the Super Bowl and looks forward to seeing the ads... but I digress)

At this point (2019) everyone & their sister has or should have an AD blocker extension installed in their browser. Once installed, no amount of devious tracking cookies by advertisers can do anything... cuz the ad blocker blocks all the ads anyway.

So cookie tracking paranoia? Get over it (and use an ad blocker).

Will that ad blocker prevent the window that is open from going to the "Adobe Flash Player" may be out of date in order to install "additional free software offers"?

 

[57004]

Time for a full-blown integrated ad- and trackingblocker in Safari. Just completely lock these guys out. The time for "industry supported" solutions is over. It's time to kill the internet advertising industry.

 

[nouveau_redneck]

Time for a full-blown integrated ad- and trackingblocker in Safari. Just completely lock these guys out. The time for "industry supported" solutions is over. It's time to kill the internet advertising industry.

Ads need not be privacy intrusions. DuckDuckGo is an example of how a company can responsibly serve ads based on the current query, instead of tracking and stalking a persons online activity.

Support responsible companies such as DuckDuckGo and Apple. Turn off irresponsible companies such as Google and Facebook.

 

[Stella]

LOL. I know I’m using Chrome!!

If I switch to Incognito mode, I get different results entirely.

I’ll give the credit to Chrome with no plugins!

Interesting.

This is what I get from my Chrome browser on the Mac. No extensions.

Test Result
Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ⚠ partial protection
Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ✗ no
Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called “acceptable ads” whitelist? ✗ no
Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no
Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗
your browser has a unique fingerprint

Wonder why the discrepancy. Are you sure you are actually using Chrome?

This is my result on my Brave browser, which does match your "Chrome" browser.
Test Result
Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ✓ yes
Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ✓ yes
Does your blocker stop trackers that are included in the so-called “acceptable ads” whitelist? ✓ yes
Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no
Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗
your browser has a unique fingerprint

So I'll give the credit to Brave, not Chrome.