I noticed this part of the spec too:

> When the `ping` attribute is present, user agents should clearly indicate to the user that following the hyperlink will also cause secondary requests to be sent in the background, possibly including listing the actual target URLs.

> For example, a visual user agent could include the hostnames of the target ping URLs along with the hyperlink's actual URL in a status bar or tooltip.

Does any browser supporting pings actually do that??

Also the "Note" in that section provides a decent argument for supporting `ping`. Basically, users will have their clicks tracked anyway, but the `ping` attribute provides more transparency and a better user experience. Though the transparency part is debatable given browser implementations.

> Also the "Note" in that section provides a decent argument for supporting `ping`. Basically, users will have their clicks tracked anyway, but the `ping` attribute provides more transparency and a better user experience.

I see this argument used a lot for including user-hostile features in browsers. I don't think it's a good argument since having a browser implementation a) makes this privacy abuse easier and b) legitimizes the practice. Meanwhile as shown in this post, user-preference to disable the feature is ignored and simply worked around by websites.

Third party links won't be "tracked anyway" if you're blocking JS. That's the only reason to have this feature since a site can track activity from its own links via logs.

This is wrong : what google currently does on firefox is make you go through a link that logs you clicked on it, then redirects you to your destination. This doesn't need any javascript, it just needs to log your http request, so it should work on any browser (even, say, elinks)

Exactly. That's why I solved this problem by using DDG.

Although I admit some searches I have to send to Google to get the result I'm looking for.

Seems to me the old Emac (or vi) saying have changed. Today it is "How do you know someone uses DDG? He'll tell you!"

How do you know someone uses Google? Well, virtually everyone does, so they probably do.

Same for me, but all google searches are done by DDG bangs like 'g!'

Using bangs defeats the purpose of using DDG in the first place.

And DDG tracks your clicks just like Google does.

Absolutely not at all. It's the reason number one why I use it because very often I know on which page I want to search for a query. And having DDG as the default search engine in the browser gives me the ability to use the URL bar to directly query Youtube with !yt or Wikipedia with !w and a lot more.

>use the URL bar to directly query Youtube with !yt or Wikipedia with !w and a lot more.

My understanding is both Chrome and Firefox can do this natively, ie without DDG

Yes you can add these, in Firefox it's called Search Shortcuts and a few are there by default. But there are a few reason why I prefer DDG:

1. I don't have to add those things in my Browser

2. When I searched DDG for something don't find good stuff I can just go to the search bar on the DDG page and add any !bang to query a search engine I like (!y for Yahoo, !g for Google, …)

3. No matter which Browser I use on which device, the only thing I have to change is the default Search engine and it's set up for anything I want to search. This is especially nice for me since I use Firefox on my Mac, Brave and Safari on my iPhone and Brave and Chromium on my Windows device

Yeah, me too. Love the bang system. Don't forget to put the exclamation point in front! "!g"

> Don't forget to put the exclamation point in front! "!g"

At least some of the bang keywords work with the "!" on either side. I tried "g!" and "w!" and they work OK.

For all the bangs I use it works either way but yes, the official way is with the exclamation in front

Seems like it's set to false by default. So it's not really a "user request" not to track so much as a "browser request" not to. Reminds me of the situation with the "Do Not Track" header where browsers sending it by default caused the signal to lose all meaning.

That wasn't what caused DNT to fail. What caused it to fail was that websites could decide whether or not to honor it, and honoring it would have meant a reduced ability to spy on people, impacting their income.

That was part of it. Obviously if sites had no choice in the matter then it wouldn't have mattered whether browsers enabled it by default or not.

Since it was a voluntary thing though, browsers sending it by default pretty much destroyed what chance there was of mainstream sites deciding to implement support for it. It's one thing to give up on tracking a small portion of users who explicitly opt-out, and another thing entirely to give up on tracking everyone except for a tiny minority who choose to opt-in.

If browsers weren't sending it be default, it wouldnt have any support because nobody saw enough traffic with it to implement it.

The design is the problem since websites who don't feel like it don't have to honor it. Whether it's because it'll bankrupt them by everyone setting it, or not bothering with supporting their unprofitable users.

No, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that when the browser that broke DNT was INTERNET EXPLORER. Internet Explorer is perhaps the most notoriously unchosen browser to ever exist.

Well, in the relation between user and browser vendor it is quite a reasonable default. I can always change my mind if I want to give up my privacy.

No tracking by default means it's Opt-In - as it should be.

Arguably, the user requested it by intentionally choosing to use a browser with that default behavior.