Implementing the Javascript Interface for the Do Not Track HTTP header

• Component: DOM
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[karl]

The Do Not Track HTTP header is a flag to give the possibility for users to advertise their preferences to not be tracked. The specification has been published as 1st WD already.

About http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-tracking-dnt-20111114/
Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)
W3C Working Draft 14 November 2011


Currently the proposed DOM Interface for this HTTP header is
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-tracking-dnt-20111114/#js-dom

WebIDL
[NoInterfaceObject]
interface NavigatorDoNotTrack {

    readonly attribute DOMString doNotTrack;
};

The specification might need to be changed. 

Note that Mozilla has a feature documented differently.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/navigator.doNotTrack
but no real bugs opened for it 
the closest is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630357

And IE supports document.navigator.doNotTrack
http://www.w3.org/Submission/2011/SUBM-web-tracking-protection-20110224/#dnt-uas

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Note that this is experimentally implemented in Safari now. Just commenting to save someone else the confusion I had when seeing it work.

[Alexander Færøy]

Is anybody working on getting this into trunk?

[Ahmad Saleem]

I think except Safari - no other browser support DND, do we need to extend this functionality or add this? or we can mark this as "RESOLVED WONTFIX" at this point?

[Ahmad Saleem]

I might be wrong here - I believe:

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

Based on this - if I do >> console.log(navigator.doNotTrack); across all browsers, I get:

Safari 15.6 --> undefined

Firefox Nightly 105 --> undefined

Chrome Canary 106 --> 1

Although MDN table mentions that Firefox do support it, it might be turned off by default.

___

So I think some browsers do support it.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Chrome still supports navigator.doNotTrack, and even has UI to enable it: <https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2790761>. I don't think that we have any intention of re-adding it, but CC'ing John in case I'm wrong.

[John Wilander]

You’re right, Alexey. See “Removed Support For the DNT (“Do Not Track”) Signal” here: https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-1/