697436 - implement DNT

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Wiki pages, defect)

Description

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Since webtrends doesn't honor the DNT header, we should detect it ourselves and skip the call to webtrends if it is enabled.

Comment 1

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Jay I'm cc'ing you on this bug to draw attention - when this lands on MDN we will probably see an instant dip in webtrends traffic by about 5% or so. Whatever the current ratio for DNT users is.

Comment 2

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

(In reply to Luke Crouch [:groovecoder] from comment #1)
> Jay I'm cc'ing you on this bug to draw attention - when this lands on MDN we
> will probably see an instant dip in webtrends traffic by about 5% or so.
> Whatever the current ratio for DNT users is.

Thanks! I'm assuming there is a way to know who has the DNT enabled, right?  Obviously not via WebTrends, but through our own server logs is there a way to get an accurate number of how many people are using it to block WebTrends?

Just want to have data to back up the dip in traffic.

Comment 3

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

We can use https://github.com/jsocol/pystatsd 

But that raises the question - does DNT include do not track my DNT usage? The precedent so far is no, since metrics tracks how many users have DNT enabled in Firefox.

Comment 4

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

See also Bug 731314

Comment 5

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(In reply to Luke Crouch [:groovecoder] from comment #3)
> We can use https://github.com/jsocol/pystatsd 

And https://github.com/mozilla/django-dnt!

> But that raises the question - does DNT include do not track my DNT usage?
> The precedent so far is no, since metrics tracks how many users have DNT
> enabled in Firefox.

No. You're not tracking the person across the web, you're counting an aggregate number of people on one website. That's totally within the spirit and "letter" of DNT.

Comment 6

[Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos]]

In ReMo (reps.m.o) we implemented DNT using javascript. You can find our implementation here

https://github.com/mozilla/remo/blob/master/media/js/remo/tracker.load.js

Hope this is useful ;)

Giorgos

Comment 7

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

(In reply to Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos] from comment #6)
That blob is gone?

Comment 8

[Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos]]

(In reply to Luke Crouch [:groovecoder] from comment #7)
> (In reply to Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos] from comment #6)
> That blob is gone?

Sadly yes. We implemented GA and we nuked that part.

Comment 9

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Is the code still around anywhere?

Comment 10

[Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos]]

Sure: https://github.com/mozilla/remo/commit/1c286d8cf7b57ee556ccac792631d75ca8d401b4

Comment 11

[Alexander Hagerman]

Has this been completed? If not any direction on how you want to implement this (ie: language etc)? Thanks.

Comment 12

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(In reply to Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos] from comment #8)
> (In reply to Luke Crouch [:groovecoder] from comment #7)
> > (In reply to Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos] from comment #6)
> > That blob is gone?
> 
> Sadly yes. We implemented GA and we nuked that part.

Why was this changed when GA was added? Does GA honor DNT headers? (If so, we don't really need to reimplement this.)

Comment 13

[Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos]]

AFAIK GA does not honor DNT headers. 

A bit of history:
We originally supported DNT in webtrends against the suggestion from "Data Governance & Privacy" group, which suggested that although webtrends is third party, since they don't sell or re-use our data, we deal with it as data collection for ourselves which should not be blocked by DNT headers. On the contrary ReMo team decided to respect DNT in all cases, thus the implementation. (bug 746092)

AFAIK (again) we do have a special contract with GA that doesn't allow them to re-use / sell our data, so I guess the same argument from the Privacy team applies here too and this time we implemented it following this direction.

I'll be more than happy to turn that on again and conditionally load GA scripts to honor DNT headers. It should be a fairly easy fix using the existing code. Let's make it happen for all mozilla properties!

Comment 14

[Chris More [:cmore]]

> AFAIK (again) we do have a special contract with GA that doesn't allow them
> to re-use / sell our data, so I guess the same argument from the Privacy
> team applies here too and this time we implemented it following this
> direction.

Mozilla went through a year long legal discussion with GA before we would ever implement it on our websites. GA had to provide how and what they stored and we would only sign a contract with them if they allowed Mozilla to opt-out of Google using the data for mining and 3rd parties.

We now have two check boxes in our GA premium account that allows us to opt-out of additional usage of our data. Because Mozilla pushed Google so hard, those two check boxes are available to every other GA user in the world regardless if they have a premium account like we do. GA also doesn't track IPs or store PII within the tool. 

I will attached a screenshot of the two check boxes in GA.

Comment 15

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Attachment: GA opt-out boxes

Comment 16

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

So, fixed by switching to GA.