Author: Andy Serpa
Date: 15:00:42 11/25/01
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On November 25, 2001 at 09:38:10, Anthony Boynes wrote: >On November 25, 2001 at 03:51:31, Andy Serpa wrote: > >>Hmmm... >> >>Thoughts: >> >>1) According to the definition offered at Bugnosis.org, the FIDE counter does >>not consitute a web bug, because it is not invisible. In fact, not only is it >>not invisible, it is clearly an advertisment -- an invitation to check out >>FIDE.com. >> > >You didn't read the definition very closely. It doesn't say that a web bug has >to be invisible. > From http://www.bugnosis.org/faq.html: ---- Are Web bugs always invisible on a page? Yes, according to our definition. ---- >>2) The counter has no particular "abilities" that enable it to do anything that >>CCC couldn't do otherwise, and every page, every image, every banner ad on the >>internet can do essentially the same thing -- although possibly not as easily. >>In other words, the invisible / not invisible distinction is essentially >>meaningless -- the bugnosis people just want to make it sound like something is >>done to you against your will. >> > >This is usually an automated process. Do you really think that most web hosting >sites have some poor guy manually looking over every entry in their logs? There >is plenty of software that will do this for them. > No, of course I don't -- I made that point. > >>3) As an example, CCC could take all the information it knows about all of us: >>Names, email addresses, logs of every time we log on and what posts we read -- >>they could make a file on each of us by analyzing the content of our posts to >>determine our likes & dislikes, and sell all that to whoever would buy it. The >>question is: do you trust CCC not to do that? > >Steve may not be doing this personally but there is a reason that people give >you "free counters". You get a counter and they get information about who >visits your site. Do you think they just throw this information in the bit >bucket after collect it? > Actually, much of it is -- most free counters are used mainly as ads for the host site -- that's why they're definitely *not* invisible. Most also have privacy policies about not sharing the info with third parties. Once again it is a question of trust. So they are marketing to you and the people that come to your site, but that doesn't mean they are neccessarily creating some database on your personal habits. The most of the rest of it is used to create generic profiles -- e.g. people that go to site A often are also seen at site B, therefore, people who are interested in A are good sales candidates for products of type B. The amount of info that is tied to you personally, such as John Smith of Dayton, Ohio likes A, B, C, is employed in the X industry, makes Z amount of money, etc. is very small. I believe the generic profiles are actually of more value to the marketeers. >Good or bad, many people have not the slightest clue as to what information can >be collected about them. There have been several well known exploits which >allowed people running web sites to read the contents of your hard drive and >even pull information from cookies or data files on your machine. > >This may all be a trade-off but the stakes can be high if you not prepared, or >take a non-chalant attitude towards privacy. I agree -- I mentioned some of the actual threats. My point (one of them, anyway), is that avoiding all sites with "web bugs" doesn't make you a bit more protected against all this. Not one itoa. It is simply one method of processing the information you are still giving them. The only real way to protect yourself is to stop visiting websites. That's a bit extreme, but disabling cookies (or at least cookies that persist beyond the time of your actual visit to a website -- disabling them all together will severly restrict what you can do on the web) is a good start because that is the method used to tie you to different websites. I don't know why bugnosis.org doesn't just say that -- disable cookies & don't fill out forms. All this about invisible images is nonsense because so many of the visible ones do the exact same thing. If you follow their advice, you're getting a false sense of security. Their software doesn't even disable anything, only puts a picture of an insect where some previously invisible image was, getting people to think that a site with a bug is "bad" and ones that don't have a bug are "good", when in fact there is no distinction...
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