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How does WP DoNotTrack help me comply with the EU Cookie Law?

Most solutions for Cookie Law compliance focus on alerting the user of the fact that cookies are needed, sometimes even letting visitors no choice but to accept the cookies or to leave the site. WP DoNotTrack takes a entirely different approach, with the ability to act on user preference as configured in the browser (see below) and thus conditionally stop tracking.

Which browsers support conditional tracking?

Both Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 9 and up offer full-fledged support for "DoNotTrack" (both in HTTP header & javascript). Apple's Safari has this option hidden in the "Develop" menu and Opera 12 (in beta now) also offers DNT-support. In fact, only Google Chrome does not have this feature at all (Google, after all, sells personalized advertising, so this touches their core business), although support is supposed to land before the end of the year.

Should I run WP DoNotTrack in black- or whitelist mode?

Although whitelist is more robust and future-proof, it might break things in both frontend and wp-admin. If you don't want to test extensively and you're not sure to begin with, start out going blacklist first.

How should I create my blacklist?

• Check what requests the browser makes when not logged in (look at a couple of different pages) and add the hostname of URL's you deem unfit to the blacklist
• Disable any caching- or javascript-aggregating plugin while testing/ making changes
• Try an external service like webpagetest.org to make sure you're seeing a real anonymous user's view

How should I create a whitelist?

• Whitelisting is somewhat more impacting, as it'll stop anything you don't explicitely allow. Be sure to study requests for both visitors and logged in users in wp-admin. In general you'd want to allow known hosts such as e.g. google-analytics.com.
• Make sure to test extensively after enabling the whitelist and tweak until everything works to your satisfaction.
• Disable any caching- or javascript-aggregating plugin while testing/ making changes
• Try an external service like webpagetest.org to make sure you're seeing a real anonymous user's view

Can WP DoNotTrack stop all tracking?

Yes, but No. When running in Normal or Forced mode, WP DoNotTrack stops most javascript-initiated 3rd party code inclusion. When running in SuperClean Mode, WP DoNotTrack will also filter the HTML. There are, however, circumstances in which tracking is unavoidable or invisible to WP DoNotTrack:

• some widgets (in the broad sense) only work with tracking enabled. But you could choose to do conditional tracking (for people who opted out) and stop the 2nd party code from being executed for those visitors.
• some trackers use Flash, which is simply out of reach of what WP DoNotTrack currently can do

Why would I need "forced" mode?

Javascript (and CSS/ HTML) optimizing plugins such as W3 Total Cache and Autoptimize change the way JavaScript is loaded (by combining, minimizing and loading at the end of the page), which can break or limit WP DoNotTrack's functionality. Start with "Normal" mode, check if tracking is stopped using e.g. webpagetest.org. If some trackers (e.g. Quantcast as initiated by some Automattic plugins) still get through and you are using a plugin that optimizes Javascript, activate the "forced" option.

Why use "SuperClean" mode?

By default DoNotTrack is used to stop javascript trackers, which typically only loads the tracking thingies to your pages when executed in the browser. Some widgets/ plugins/ themes might also add tracking to the HTML (as a hidden image, iframe or with javascript). "SuperClean" mode checks the HTML before it is sent to the browser to stop that kind of tracking. SuperClean is beta functionality, do test and let me know how that works for you! Combining "SuperClean" and "whitelist" is a very powerful solution, which can prevent some of the

Why can't I select "SuperClean" mode?

Superclean is not yet available if you're only enabling WP DoNotTrack for people who configured their browsers to do so (conditional filtering based on the donottrack-header). This will become available in the future, but there's caching plugins to take into account when combining conditional filtering with SuperClean.

Any bugs/ issues should I know about?

• After installing or when making changes to the WP DoNotTrack configuration, you might have to clear the caches of caching plugins you might be using (e.g. WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache). Consider it "best practice" to disable caching & javascript-aggregating plugins while testing new black- or whitelists
• ClourFlare seems to interfere with the way the plugin gets loaded and the way it functions. You can solve the problem by disabling "Rocket Loader" and/or "Auto Minify" alltogether.
• Not a bug, but still an known issue; as WP DoNotTrack is also active in the wp-admin-pages, it will -when in whitelist mode- impact plugins that (for whatever reason) pull in javascript from elsewhere in their option-pages. This very plugin for instance, depends on googleapis.com to render a rss-widget.

I found a bug/ I would like a feature to be added!

Just tell me, I like the feedback and in general I'll reply within a couple of hours. Use the Contact-page on my blog, leave a comment in a post about DoNotTrack or post about it on the wordpress.org plugin forum

How you can help

• Explain people (in real life and/or on your blog, on Facebook, on Twitter ...) that you disabled 3rd party tracking on your blog.
• Tell me about bugs you think you've found and if you can't find any, confirm it works with your version of WP on wordpress.org
• Ask me for a feature you would like to see added (cfr. contact info above)
• Rate my plugin on wordpress.org.