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I think "do-not-track" is a very old topic and maybe no one is talking about it anymore but just out of curiosity, does anyone know how to verify if a website follows (or violates) the do-not-track setting in your web browser?

While most major web browser has implemeted DNT, I don't see much support for the Tk header. So if the web server doesn't respond with the tk header, how would one know for sure if their dnt request is even complied or not.

weefwefwqg3
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DNT was originally proposed by the ad networks and they promised to honour its setting, secretly hoping that nobody would enable it. Browser makers then promptly implemented it, defaulted to on. Ad networks whined "not fair" and then went back on their promises and refused to honour it. It has therefore mostly been ignored (though my own services pay attention to it).

Most annoyingly, Safari dropped support for DNT altogether, after being one of the first to adopt it. This was a short-lived victory for the ad networks; Apple has just got their own back by implementing their privacy first approach to iOS, and it takes control away from ad networks completely.

One of the fundamental problems is that you can't tell if a site honours it or not. As a result, while the Tk header is well intentioned, it's entirely dependent on the honesty of the provider, so it has about as much hope of ever being implemented faithfully as RFC3514.

Synchro
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  • Thanks @Synchro for the insight, I also came across this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/58447221/4448477, whose author said that their service (website https://getinsights.io/) respects the `dnt specification`, but I don't see any `tk` in their response header. Can you pls let me know if I am checking for a wrong flag or is there any other flag in the response header to check if the server has hornored the `dnt-enabled` request? As you said `your services pay attention to it`, can you pls share me a url of yours that respects `dnt` request by returning the `tk` flag in the response header? – weefwefwqg3 May 14 '21 at 21:17
  • It appears as of now the `tk` header is deprecated and should not be used. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Tk – EHLOVader Feb 01 '22 at 16:25