In a recent developer post, Apple announced that it would be removing the Do Not Track setting in its Safari browser for both the mobile and PC version. The removal of the feature was due in part to the fact that it could be used to track a person’s browsing activity (despite how counter-intuitive that sounds).
This is because the Do Not Track feature is only an expression of preference, and according to Alan Toner, special adviser at Electronic Frontier Foundation, there aren’t regulations requiring companies to abide by people’s preferences, or major repercussions for companies that ignore them.
Privacy advocates have expressed worries that this is a step in the wrong direction for data privacy, and that this might encourage Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox to remove their version of the feature.
But this worry seems misplaced given Apple’s recent history of pro data-privacy advocacy, with CEO Tim Cook on multiple occasions calling for comprehensive privacy laws as well as pushing for the FTC to introduce tools to help users control the online data collected about them.
While this may appear worrisome on the surface, it seems to me that Apple is simply removing a feature that gave users a false sense of security about their personal data while browsing online.
I hope that this Apple’s first step in a wider move for greater privacy regulation, particularly in the US, where there is still much room for improvement. See this as a positive step in the right direction – Apple are no longer standing by and giving users a false sense of security with a feature that clearly doesn’t work and can be misused – rather than worry about this being a step backwards in the data privacy debate.
