1967420 - Unship DNT

Status: NEW

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, task, P3)

Description

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

We would like to unship our DNT implementation (header and navigator property). The option to enable it in preferences has been removed in Firefox Desktop in version 135.

SUMO:

Starting in Firefox version 135, the “Do Not Track” setting has been removed. Many sites do not respect this indication of a person's privacy preferences and, in some cases, it can reduce privacy. If you wish to ask websites to respect your privacy, you can use the “Tell websites not to sell or share my data” setting built on top of the Global Privacy Control (GPC) feature. GPC is respected by increasing numbers of sites and enforced with legislation in some regions. To learn more, please read Global Privacy Control.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-turn-do-not-track-feature?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

MDN:

The whole DNT (Do Not Track) specification has been discontinued. The mechanism design was flawed, because it was a cooperative feature between users, websites, and browsers. The idea is that the user tells the website to not track them, and the website would comply. However, there is no strict enforcement of this policy, so advertisement websites ignored the DNT header and tracked users anyway. The feature is therefore useless. Moreover, it is harmful as it leaves more user fingerprint in the header, which can be used to track users even more.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/doNotTrack

Comment 1

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove DNT prefs. r=#anti-tracking!

Comment 2

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove DNT from preferences privacy page. r=#anti-tracking!

Comment 3

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove navigator.doNotTrack. r=#anti-tracking!

Comment 4

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove DNT header. r=#anti-tracking!,#necko!

Comment 5

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove DNT from Normandy code. r=#anti-tracking!

Comment 6

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove DNT url-classifier tests. r=#anti-tracking!

Comment 7

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1967420 - Remove DNT telemetry. r=#anti-tracking!

Comment 8

[EpicTux123]

Hi there,

Do those commits provide a mechanism to clear "privacy.donottrackheader.enabled" and "services.sync.prefs.sync.privacy.donottrackheader.enabled" from the user's profile?

Thanks.

Comment 9

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

(In reply to EpicTux123 from comment #8)

Hi there,

Do those commits provide a mechanism to clear "privacy.donottrackheader.enabled" and "services.sync.prefs.sync.privacy.donottrackheader.enabled" from the user's profile?

Thanks.

Not currently. The patches attached are obsolete. When we pick up this work we'll make sure to clean up the prefs from user profiles. Thanks for checking!