action-307, issue-119, absolutely not tracking

(The issue asks for normative text, the action for non-normative, this is non-normative).  We need to tell sites that basically are not in the tracking business what they need to do…




There are circumstances in which sites will appear in as third parties in a transaction, but those sites perform little or no tracking. Such sites might include those providing libraries of resources, such as scripts, style-sheets, or images, or sites providing content intended to be 'mashed up' into other sites. Unfortunately, it is not possible to distinguish, among the sites that do not implement Do Not Track, those that track but do not (yet) implement DNT, and sites that do not track.

For this reason, it is recommended that these non-tracking sites implement a static well-known resource and/or a static DNT response header, indicating their status. The recommended status is '3' (fully third-party compliant, with no qualifiers and no permissions claimed) or '3s' (third party, claiming only the short-term logging permission).  If logging is performed, then complying with the requirements for short-term logging may be necessary, to be compliant under these specifications.


David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2012 17:36:00 UTC