A recently released snapshot build of Opera 12 (Wahoo), the upcoming major release of Opera’s desktop browser, has added support for “Do not Track”. This feature is disabled by default and users can enable it to send DNT HTTP header.

The DNT HTTP header tells websites that the user wants to opt-out of the online behavioral advertising (OBA). Unfortunately, it is not honored by most of the websites.

As Opera adds support for “Do not track” feature, all major browsers except Google Chrome now support this mechanism to avoid OBA. Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari already have option to turn-on DNT, which sends additional DNT: 1 HTTP header with every request.

Google Chrome does not support DNT, but Google offers an extension, Keep My Opt-outs, for Chrome users which disables personalized advertising and tracking through industry’s self-regulation programs.

To enable DNT in Opera 12, visit Preferences  (Ctrl + F12) > Advanced > Security and select the option “Ask websites not to track me” as shown in the above screenshot. The latest Opera Wahoo snapshot build (12.00 alpha Build 1301) can be downloaded from here. This build adds several other features like optimizations for faster SSL handling, support for progress events in XMLHttpRequest etc.