I just do not want to be tracked....

Tracking vs Ad blockers

Yesterday, whilst visiting the wired.com site I was met with the below page:

Credit: Wired.com

I thought that this was strange as I don't use an AD blocker.

However I do have the Tracking Protection option enabled in Firefox, 

primarily to make pages load faster but also because I do not want to be tracked across the web.

Tracking cookies are used by sites to identify us online and then serve Ads related to the content that you have previously viewed. Most ad networks and tracking systems (like Google Analytics) collect information about user behavior and pages visited.

Firefox also has a "Do Not Track" option that lets you express a preference not to be tracked by websites. It does this by transmitting a Do Not Track HTTP header every time your request data from the web. If the site respects your privacy preferences, you will see more generic ads in place of behavioral ads.

The downfall of this approach is that it depends on the Web sites in question to be reputable enough to honor the "do not track" request. As such this is a fairly flawed approach.

There has been a massive rise in the use of ad-blockers recently.

The main reasons for this seem to be around: performance, privacy & security concerns.

This has led to some sites such as Wired and Forbes denying access to users who have ad-blockers installed.

I do not mind unobtrusive advertising on the websites I visit. I understand that content producers need to (and should) get paid, and that their main source of revenue is advertising. There's no such thing as a free lunch. As such I choose not to use an ad-blocker.

However I do object to non-consensual online tracking. As such, I guess I will not be visiting Wired anytime soon. 

Advertising certainly won’t be going away as it's a fundamental part of the web ecosystem. However the online advertising industry need to understand that the rise of ad-blockers is partly due to this (what I believe to be) an unethical practice.

Links:

Tech Crunch - Ad Blocking: A Primer 

Zdnet - Do Not Track: The pros and cons of being followed

Mozilla - What is tracking protection? 

EFF - How to Turn on Do Not Track in Your Browser 

EFF - 4 Simple Changes to Stop Online Tracking