Change the focus of the non-intrusive advertising list?

[auserofabp]

Would it be possible to change the allow non-intrusive ads list so that it whitelists ads that respect web surfers' privacy instead of whitelisting visually non-intrusive ads? By "respect web surfers' privacy" I mean that the advertiser/ad must not track the user in any way, nor should the advertiser/ad collect any significant personal information.

[auserofabp]

No one is able to answer this post?

[lewisje]

They're working on it: en/acceptable-ads#criteria

These criteria are not final, we are working on improving them. In particular, we want to require that user's privacy is respected (mandatory Do Not Track support). However, we are not yet in a position to enforce that requirement.

(Since that page was published, ABP has ceased to implement DNT, because of changes in the protocol that require browser-level support for it to work at all, but still methinks Till Faida, Wladimir Palant, etc. are considering adding criteria about respecting privacy.)

[auserofabp]

When they say they are not yet in a position to enforce such a requirement, does this mean that there are no advertisers who don't track users, or that Wladimir/Till/whoever can't enforce such agreements like they enforce the current ones (i.e. removing the advertiser from the whitelist)?

[lewisje]

First of all, it is no longer possible for an extension to even fully implement DNT; second, even if it still were, DNT requires action on the part of ad companies to be effective.

Unlike the blocking of cookies or tracking scripts from certain domains, which keeps you from being tracked regardless of what an advertiser or analytics firm wants, DNT is intended to be a "middle ground" that both trackers and browser manufacturers can agree on, in which the browser sends a signal saying "please don't track me" and the tracking companies are supposed to implement a means to understand that signal and respond to it; currently there are no laws mandating that advertisers comply with a DNT signal, nor even industry standards to that effect, although there is a standard that says that browsers must not activate DNT by default, so both Yahoo! and Apache now ignore the DNT signal from IE10, which has been judged to be activated by default (although if you use Apache and have access to httpd.conf, just remove a few choice lines and you'll treat IE10 just like any other browser for the purposes of DNT).


Now more generally, I guess it's just harder for the ABP team to verify that trackers are well-behaved enough to warrant whitelisting than that ads are unintrusive enough, because the tracking is harder to see directly.

[auserofabp]

Now more generally, I guess it's just harder for the ABP team to verify that trackers are well-behaved enough to warrant whitelisting than that ads are unintrusive enough, because the tracking is harder to see directly.

That clarifies things a bit, but is DNT support the only privacy criterion that the ABP team will consider implementing?

[lewisje]

I'm guessing that requiring that a tracker obey the DNT signal is just one criterion, but it could well be sufficient once users turn DNT on.

[auserofabp]

I'm guessing that requiring that a tracker obey the DNT signal is just one criterion, but it could well be sufficient once users turn DNT on.

In otherwords, DNT support is the simplest, most effective, and least debatable privacy criterion that could be used for the non-intrusive advertising list, and this criterion doesn't exist yet because DNT support is not currently widespread among advertisers. Thanks lewisje for explaining this, I look forward to the addition of the DNT criterion and re-enabling the non-intrusive advertising list.