IE9 tracking protection, a shot across Google's bow ?

[Regenweald]

MS is implementing 'Tracking Protection'in IE9 squared at protecting users' privacy online and whatnot. Is this a direct frontal at the beast that makes its bread and butter by tracking or attempting to track our every move online ? OR
am I reading too much into this ?

[rich wargo]

Actually, this is more a response to concerns by 'human rights' groups and others about being able to track which websites a person has previously accessed during a session. That it cripples Google is merely a sidebar.

I believe Opera and some other browser already implements; Microsoft can't be seen as being indifferent to users' concerns. Internet Exploder already has enough strikes against it.

[Regenweald]

I would like to test it though and see if I still get targeted ads according to my region.. you know " Girls in 'your town' want to meet you!" type stuff....and if it would somehow affect gmails' keyword targeting.

[charlie]

I think it will be as successful as most other MS 'foolproof' security measures, IE they only work if you have good intentions and play by the rules. I think this time around, they may send the eastern european mob some flowers and ask them not to work around it, or at least take more than the traditional 23 minutes to obsolete it.

-Charlie

[lurrker]

Originally Posted by Regenweald

I would like to test it though and see if I still get targeted ads according to my region.. you know " Girls in 'your town' want to meet you!" type stuff....and if it would somehow affect gmails' keyword targeting.

The location targeted ads are based on your IP address which will still be visable to advertisers.

For the keyword targetting, this is based on cookies at present in order to provide a unique ID which can then be tracked across multiple sites. My understanding of the MS method for addressing this is that it will only allow cookies from the site you are currently visting to be accepted (with a whitelist to allow exceptions) which will make tracking more difficult.

The way around this is to have a way of linking a per-site ID back to a globally unique ID via, say, a web browser toolbar.....