Could this perhaps have been Microsoft's intention? They've implemented a widely unpopular feature that is bound to be circumvented on a large scale. They basically bastardized the execution of DNT, making it moot while at the same time protecting them from any personal liability. Or am I being cynical?
<i>In order to respect user intent, we must ignore user intent which may be expressed via a recently added user setting, because the setting's default value interferes w/ our profit margin.</i><p>Orwellian.
I feel that this is is often blown far out of proportion, everyone sells the whole DNT option as the holy grail of privacy, but the honest truth is that not everyone cares about privacy, in fact, most people don't care about it at all.<p>Everyone seems to be confusing privacy with "tiny amounts of information" such as age, gender, etc. which most people are perfectly happy entering on basically any site.<p>It shouldn't be advertised as "Do not track gives you privacy" it should be advertised as "Do not track stops companies from saving personal information about you, such as age, gender and location. Whilst this increases your level of anonymity while you browse, it also lowers the companies ability to provide you with a valuable experience, for instance, it can stop adverts popping up which you may find irrelevant and will allow them to better follow your needs online."
I didn't catch anything about DNT at all during setup on my Surface (not saying it wasn't there). Just tried to find the setting; it's not exposed on the Metro side at all, it's not in the logical place for it (the "Privacy" tab), rather in the "Advanced" tab and under the Security heading, nearly at the bottom of the list[0]. Microsoft's DNT position has always smelled like a political stunt, burying it like this doesn't do much to disprove that.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/xslbzy04l37wnf7/Screenshot%20%289%29.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/xslbzy04l37wnf7/Screenshot%20%289%...</a>
Of course this is their response, and I'm sure the response of a lot of other advertisers, too. Microsoft is deciding for the user (the option to disable appears in an obscure place with the installation of Windows 8, which I'm sure most people will miss).<p>If they were serious about this, they would just block those cookies by default. Otherwise it's pointless, and having Microsoft decide for the user makes the advertiser's decision to ignore it even easier.