Privacy.donottrackheader.enabled
Background
The “Do Not Track” feature is a mechanism that allows to communicate a user's tracking preferences to websites. User tracking is performed by websites, including advertisers and analytics services as well as social sites, to gather information about the user's web browsing pattern. This includes the history of sites visited along with preferences stated and purchases made. Such sites often use this information to show advertisements for products or services specifically targeted based on the user's profile. See External links below for further reading.
Possible values and their effects
True
Send information about the user's tracking preferences to all websites. Prior to Firefox 21.0 and SeaMonkey 2.18, this is always “Do Not Track”; in Firefox 21.0 and later as well as SeaMonkey 2.18 and later, the header sent depends on the privacy.donottrackheader.value setting.
False
Do not send any tracking preferences to any website. (Default)
Caveats
- Websites are not obligated to honor the request.
UI
Mozilla Firefox
This setting is located in Tools → Options → Privacy:
- Prior to Firefox 21.0, the preference is directly connected to the “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked” checkbox.
- Starting with Firefox 21.0, this preference is False when choosing “Do not tell sites anything about my tracking preferences” and True in the other selections.
SeaMonkey
This setting is located in the Edit → Preferences → Privacy & Security main tab:
- Prior to SeaMonkey 2.18, the preference is directly connected to the “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked” checkbox.
- Starting with SeaMonkey 2.18, the checkbox is labelled “Tell websites about my tracking preference” and followed by the header value selection.
First checked in
Has an effect in
- Mozilla Firefox (nightly builds since 2011-01-28; 4.0b11 and later)
- SeaMonkey (nightly builds since 2011-01-28; 2.1b2 and later)
Related bugs
- Bug 628197 - Implement do-not-track HTTP header
- Bug 765398 - Implement three-state UI for DNT (do not track me, okay to track me, decline to state)
- Bug 835134 - Modify Privacy & Security Preferences UI to reflect recent backend additions