alt Hacker NewsThe bill they are talking about[1] was completely worthless and deserved to be vetoed. All it did was require browsers and mobile OSes to have a "setting that enables a consumer to send an opt-out preference signal to businesses with which the consumer interacts through the mobile operating system".
It didn't refer to any standard about how this signal should be sent so different browsers could send completely different information.
It didn't put any requirements on businesses who receive this signal. They are free to completely ignore it just like Do-Not-Track, and most will.
Even if a company wanted to comply out of good will it doesn't define even vaguely what people are opting out of by toggling this setting which would lead to confusion as different sites would implement different things, and different browsers and OSes would describe it differently.
It was literally mandating a dummy button.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
Replies
Thanks, what an awful article. I gave up after eight paragraphs in and it had said absolutely nothing.
Which begs the question, why are we constantly trying to off load personal security to others? Where is your personal responsibility to secure your own information? If you want better privacy, why not just not use Google or Apple? There are several phones and mobile OS's which are hyper focused on privacy. They all come with compromises, but even decent OpSec is hard.
We've become such a lazy society, its depressing.
Thanks for pointing out how worthless this bill was.
> They are free to completely ignore it just like Do-Not-Track, and most will.
That is not correct. Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711728