If you have tried online shopping recently, then you would have noticed the targeted ads that tracks your online activities and shows ads related to that. Google and Mozilla provided different approaches in which users can choose to opt-out of targeted ads. Microsoft has revamped its browser with IE9 and now it has added Tracking Protection to it.
The approach from Mozilla required adoption from everyone involved, while the approach from Google required user level activation and Microsoft takes the combination of both in its approach. Microsoft has enabled the Tracking Protection as part of its IE9 RC release, which makes this feature available for user in just two clicks.
The approach from Microsoft involves downloading a Tracking Protection List (TPL) that blocks third-party cookies, tracking pixels, web beacons, hit counters, analytics scripts and other tools to profile the online activities of a person. I follow the blog by Ed Bott for reliable source of information on Microsoft products and the first post of a series from him about this is detailed to make things more clear
The approach by Microsoft as stated by Ed Bott is considered to be the first attempt in moving the technology from add-on or extensions, directly into the browser. Summarizing what Ed Bott's mentioned in his blog, the approach works as follows
Author: Vinod
Source: ZDNET
The approach from Mozilla required adoption from everyone involved, while the approach from Google required user level activation and Microsoft takes the combination of both in its approach. Microsoft has enabled the Tracking Protection as part of its IE9 RC release, which makes this feature available for user in just two clicks.
The approach from Microsoft involves downloading a Tracking Protection List (TPL) that blocks third-party cookies, tracking pixels, web beacons, hit counters, analytics scripts and other tools to profile the online activities of a person. I follow the blog by Ed Bott for reliable source of information on Microsoft products and the first post of a series from him about this is detailed to make things more clear
The approach by Microsoft as stated by Ed Bott is considered to be the first attempt in moving the technology from add-on or extensions, directly into the browser. Summarizing what Ed Bott's mentioned in his blog, the approach works as follows
- Someone / Group creates a list of domains and strings that they want to allow (or block) as third party content on a page
- The author formats the list using Microsoft's Tracking Protection List and posts it on the web
- Someone creates a link to the URI from that list
- Click on that link from IE9 and use the Add List option as shown in screen below and this copies the formatted file to the local system as rules for IE
- From this point IE will use the TPL to block any of the means to track the user activities
This approach from Microsoft works only on third-party content and cannot block direct requests to that site. It is possible to have one or more list active at a time. Just like different Antivirus firms, there may be officially monitored and maintained list to track all these shady third-party sites. This is definitely not a fool-proof system, but another variation of getting it accomplished.
I will need to keep checking on this blog for additional posts from Ed that will compare this approach against Google / Firefox. For now, I still favor the approach from Google, as I seem to have more control than other approaches.
Author: Vinod
Source: ZDNET
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