The End of an Era: Firefox's 'Do Not Track' Feature Gets the Boot

Have you ever wished to tell websites, "Hey, hands off my privacy"? Firefox started this idea with "Do Not Track" over 13 years ago. But now, they've called it quits on this feature as of version 135. You won't see that option anymore in the Website Privacy Preference section. Why? Well, many sites just don't care about this request, and it might even reduce your privacy in some cases. Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge still have this feature, but it's about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. A newer thing called Global Privacy Control has taken its place. It's more supported and even backed by some laws. So, how did we end up here?

Back in 2010, the Federal Trade Commission wanted a way for us to tell websites not to track us, just like we can tell telemarketers not to call us. Researchers thought of a browser-based way to make this happen. Advertisers were (and still are) tracking what we do on the web to show us ads. Google made a Chrome add-on that would tell 15 big advertising networks to stop tracking you. Even if you cleared your cookies, this opt-out would stick. It seemed pretty good at the time. But now, things have changed.

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