undetectable tracking device raises Web privacy concerns (fwd)

Peter van Heusden pvh at egenetics.com
Mon Jul 17 05:55:57 PDT 2000


On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, Michael Hoover wrote:


> below sent to me by friend, no source indicated... Michael Hoover
>
> > A widely used, yet virtually undetectable, means of tracking people's
> > Internet surfing habits is joining its better-known cousin, the cookie,
> > as the subject of several lawsuits and a privacy initiative by the
> > government.
> >
> > The technology, often called Web bugs or 1-pixel gifs, is prompting
> > further concern that the once-freewheeling Web is becoming more like an
> > Orwellian Big Browser.

This article makes some stunning conflations of technology. 1-pixel gifs still use cookies as part of the tracking mechanism - the problems are cookies, and the lack of any rights to privacy while browsing. Smarter cookie-control policies (e.g. only accept cookies from the site that you are viewing) are a partial defence.

But then again, no technical solution helps when fucked or not-so-fucked companies start selling your details.

Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844



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