September 24, 2003

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  This is a newsletter I recently received from Anonymizer, Inc., who have a browser plugin that allows an individual to surf the web incognito.' It highlights some things I've tried to teach others about emails & Internet surfing. It backs up the need for such as firewalls (hardware firewalls aren't enough!) like ZoneAlarm, BlackIce Defender, etc.; as well as blocking popup ads & implanted ads on websites.

  
  

   

  
  

  It also defines the problem with unwelcome emails. As I've told people when teaching them the basics of using the Net... DON'T click on links imbedded within your email! Copy/paste the link into a NEW browser window. Otherwise, you've just transmitted your email addy to networks who sell information. As well as your email addy, alot of other data gets transmitted as well! Sometimes, you can right-click on the linked word & select 'copy shortcut,' but this is NOT advisable in certain online email viewing, like Hotmail, which 'shortcuts' through your email addy. If you download your email to your computer, the linked URL can sometimes be viewed by holding the cursor over the linked word. You can then HAND TYPE the URL of the site you want to visit in a new browser window. NEVER click on a link in your email! ALWAYS copy/paste or hand type the URL so your email information is not transmitted!

  
  

  
  

  
  
  When you click an ad or follow a link on the web, you can reasonably expect the website you visit to try to track you. What you may not know is that this tracking takes place on many other, more covert, levels.

  
  

  Even though you think you are staying within a site as you navigate through it, many times you are actually surfing on a “partner” site that has been set up to look like part of the original site. Travel sites are notorious for this, but the practice is very widespread. In many cases a technology called “frames” is used, so the top and side of the page continues to be loaded from the original site while the body of the page is actually loaded from a third party site. This third party site is governed by its own privacy policy so it can do whatever it wants without regard to any protections in the original site’s privacy policy.

  
  

  One of the most annoying parts of surfing the web are the pop-up ads you see on more and more web sites. These are usually not served from the site that launched them. They are actually served either by the advertiser, or by the servers of an advertising network. Any advertiser can track you on any page where that ad appears, or in the case of the advertising networks any page they have any advertisement on. This tracking is just as powerful and intrusive as if you had visited the advertiser’s web site directly.

  
  

  The same is true of banner ads within the pages you visit. Even though they appear within another company’s web site, the banner images are actually loaded from the advertiser’s web site. You don’t even have to click on the link for the advertiser to be able to see who you are and what site you are viewing, just seeing the ad is all it takes from them to latch on to you. Not only can they see you, but they can cookie you, track you, and use active scripts to pull additional information out of your browser as soon as that image loads on the page.

  
  

  Worse yet, many people who want to track you don’t appear on the page at all. Using a technology called “web bugs” the snooper places an invisible image on the page that can do all the tracking that a full pop-up or ad could do, but you never even know it is there. You need to actually view the source code for the page, and search through the HTML by hand to see if there is a bug in the page.

  
  

  The final straw is “email bugs”. These are like web bugs in that they can be invisible, but they actually load as soon as you view an email from the snooper. It not only tracks who you are, where you are, it reports back your email address and the exact time you viewed the email. If you have your mail client to show emails in a preview area, you may not have time to delete the email before it starts tracking you.

  
  

  Finally, all the information gathered by any of the above means, in addition to information gathered directly by web sites, both through tracking and through web forms, contests, and surveys, can be freely sold and traded. This free exchange of information magnifies the amount of information about you in wide circulation.

  
  

  It is critical to use tools that allow you to see who is tracking you, not just the sites you intended to visit, and then to take some action to stop the information pillaging.

  
  

  Sincerely,
  Lance Cottrell
  President and Founder - Anonymizer, Inc.

  • 1:49 am
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