An article I read in this week's economist said that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 10 (available with Windows 8) will have "do not track" DNT set as the default. Currently, Firefox, Safari and IE all offer DNT but none have that set as the default. Savvy users would have to take the time to select the DNT option if they know about it and want it, but most users (including me) just stick with the set defaults. As you can imagine, advertisers are quite upset!
I am torn between thinking this DNT default is a good or bad thing. Probably a little bit of both. On the one hand it gives users more privacy which can be nice at times - especially with those more embarrassing searches! But on the other hand I think I sometimes take for granted how nice it is to see ads and search suggestions that are pretty relevant to me based on my past searches that have been tracked. Maybe a better and more transparent option would be to have the DNT setting visible on the search page itself. That way users have a higher likelihood of knowing this option exists and if they cared can easily check or uncheck the DNT setting each time.
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