Microsoft has decided to stop adding Do Not Track by default on future releases of Internet Explorer and Project Spartan following a campaign against advertisers and Google to stop overreaching intrusion into people's private information on the internet.

The software giant launched a Scroogled campaign a few years ago, targeting Google's advertising and tracking practices. It seems a bit ironic Microsoft is now dropping the default implementation of Do Not Track.

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"Put simply, we are updating our approach to DNT to eliminate any misunderstanding about whether our chosen implementation will comply with the W3C standard," said Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch.

"Without this change, websites that receive a DNT signal from the new browsers could argue that it doesn't reflect the users' preference, and therefore, choose not to honor it."

Microsoft is adamant it would have kept defaulting the Do Not Track if the W3C standard had not been changed. The issue is the actual number of advertisers that honor requests to not track information is extremely low due to the lucrative amount of information that can be taken from tracking.

Not all tracking is bad. In fact, a lot of it is meta data about retention, interest, search and other small things. In the past few years, Google and other advertising companies have focused on making sure ads are not too intrusive on people's privacy.

Google and Mozilla both offer Do Not Track features on their own web browsers, Chrome and Firefox, respectively. The difference is they have never added them by default, stating it should be the decision of the user to turn the tracking feature on or off.

Some privacy advocates claim tracking users is abhorrent, but the actual data most advertisers collect is so insignificant it amounts to no change in the way advertisers show adverts.

Microsoft is working on the next web browser to take over Internet Explorer, named Project Spartan. Unlike IE, which has only seen success on desktop computers, Project Spartan will be platform agnostic and should be tailored more towards the mobile world.

That means Project Spartan will likely be available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone at launch. Microsoft plans to launch Windows 10 with Project Spartan this summer.

TagsDo Not Track, Web browser, internet explorer, Project Spartan