I recently read a Mozilla/Firefox blog about the GPC signal, used to request that sites do not sell my user data or profile information gleaned fom BOTS, to third parties. However, the 2 PREF items to activate this are set to FALSE by default, which is dissapointing to say the least, considering that this has been in the Firefox browser since mid-2021 .
I have created a BUGZILLA enhancement request for the 2 preferences to be turned on (TRUE) with a UI setting, as non-technical users will be reluctant to interect with about:config due to the warning.
See BUG 1830623
I recently looked into this, because the tools and vacuums site Stanley Black & Decker published a comprenensive Global Privacy Policy, as they have a global presence. They had put a lot of effort in covering many aspects of user privacy, and touched on the GPC, plus handling different jurisdictions where legal requirements needed to be covered, such as new privacy laws in California and some other USA states, plus GDPR legislation.
This makes a refreshing change, and many site and company Privacy Polieis leave very much to be desired, especially in the area of user data being handled by third parties, and other countries besides the one that the company is operating in, OR the country that the web-site is being hosted in. That last phrase of course, is a bit of a loaded gun, because very few users are actually aware of the hosting country of particular website or their related services, which could be split over several domains. Large corporations could have a site presence in Australia, but back-end database servers in the USA, or India for example.
In any event, the average user's expectation, is that sites SHOUD be honouring the GPC signal, whatever country they operate from.
However, I have seen very little hard evidence that large corporate sites (OR the Social Media sites especially) actually DO, or have ever stated publicly that they actually do.
So, the reason for this discussion, is to see if Mozilla Firefox would consider setting up a blog, where the sites KNOWN to honour the GPC signal is listed and documented.
After all, they should realise that in doing so, would drastically improve the user trust, that has been so obviously lacking, after the Cambridge Anaytics scandal, and highly publicised data breaches.
