What was new for me in the Yahoo scare was that web bugs can track your contact with *all* web sites and not just the one from which you catch/accept the bug.
The notes Kelley forwarded seem to confirm this:
>In addition, advertising networks can use Web bugs to collect information
>on what sites a person is visiting to create a personal profile.
> Track what Web pages an individual visits across many different Web sites.
Was that happening in 1996/7?
Even under the libertarian principle of informed consent, we usually get asked by responsible lists whether we object to our names being given to commercial companies. The alarm signalled by the user of Yahoo which I quoted, is that she found nothing like a process of informed consent about the fact that the innocently named "web beacon" would be potentially gathering information about *all* her commercially significant use of the internet throughout its length and breadth.
Also, as a by-product of course, such devices would monitor the frequency of visits to left wing or marxist websites, which could be of interest to agencies believing that they are combatting the use of the internet by terrorists.
Am I slow, or isn't this a qualitative new development, which should interest us all? Just because you are confident you are not a terrorist does not mean someone else does not think it wise to put you on a list of possible suspects. After all terrorists may be interested in doing spectacular damage to prominent symbols of capitalism. How did the Provisional IRA learn that to be effective it should place its bomb at the Baltic Exchange? (Answer: by studying in prison for the Open University)
So if you are carrying one of these little web beacons every time you visit Lou Proyect's Marxism site this marks you out as a targetted member of a sub group, with possible security relevance. (Remember the software is specifically interested in profiling subgroups.)
Secondly if what is recent is that commercial web sites found they could not get an adequate revenue stream from open subscriptions but by selling information about users with little informed consent, should we not now know in macro economic terms the size of turnover of this market in information and its capitalisation? Is that what is keeping the internet going now in economic terms?
Doug if you do not mind personally (and I agree we all have to shrug some of this off) are there not articles yet in the main stream press about this economic practice. Should we not be "observing" this commercial "business" from a left point of view??
Regards
Chris Burford