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Posted by michael on Wednesday January 26, @12:10AMfrom the where-did-you-go-today dept.
Slav writes "We've known for a while that tracking of Web users was possible and a few companies have been experimenting with it on a small scale. Now DoubleClick, Inc. has confirmed that it's tracking Web surfers [by name and address] with the help of the databases of its newly acquired Abacus Direct." Every site that you visit which has a DoubleClick ad - all 11,500 of them - can be notified of your name, address, phone number, etc., as soon as you visit the site. Or to look at it another way, your consumer profile in the gigantic Abacus database (hundreds of fields of data for essentially every person in the United States) will now include information about what Web sites you visit.
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| Bad (Score:2) by RickyRay (rickyray@patrickhayes.dont_spam_me.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:14AM EST (#3) (User Info) |
| What's the best way to block them from knowing who you are without going through an anonymizing site? (I'm not a novice; I just want a list of any products/free packages to get current info) |
| Re:Bad (Score:3, Informative) by pen (digdug@hotmail.com?subject=notspam:[subject]) on Wednesday January 26, @12:21AM EST (#26) (User Info) http://altern.org/digdug/ |
| If you're a Windows or *nix user, you could try the Internet Junkbuster proxy. If you're willing to pay ($19.95) and use Windows, try interMute. The latter will auto-configure your browsers, including Netscape, IExplode, Opera, and AOL. -- |
| Re:Bad (Score:2, Informative) by znu (znu@znu.dhs.org) on Wednesday January 26, @12:27AM EST (#48) (User Info) http://znu.dhs.org/ |
| For Macs there's WebFree, which can block ads in IE and Communicator, or the rather nice but also rather beta iCab browser, which has ad filtering abilities built in. -- The revolution will not be televised. You'll have to watch the webcast |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Valheru on Wednesday January 26, @11:18AM EST (#358) (User Info) |
| Not sure if this is the case or not, but does just blocking the AD (and not displaying it) prevent DoubleClick from tracking you? When you load the web page I would assume that the cgi script is still processed and that doubleclick servers are hit to send the ad to your computer (which you then ignore). Thus, they already have your IP and know which web page you were on. Once again, I do not know if this is the case, and I hope that it isn't because it then you can just configure ipchains to block doubleclick.com (I think) |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by MattJ on Wednesday January 26, @12:29PM EST (#388) (User Info) http://newsblip.com/ |
| Good question, but its a separate cookie. There's a security design issue (bug) in the browsers where they'll allow a cookie in the headers sent with an image. When your browser retrieves the URL for the ad image, it's in that request-response that the doubleclick cookie gets sent. |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by MattJ on Wednesday January 26, @03:36PM EST (#425) (User Info) http://newsblip.com/ |
| (Actually, by the *security* issue I mean that the browser will accept cookies from the ad image's server, even if it's in a different domain than the web page. So you think you're only viewing xyz.com, but quietly your browser is accepting cookies from doubleclick.com via the ad image retrieval.) |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Ozwald on Wednesday January 26, @06:54PM EST (#449) (User Info) |
| No, Junkbuster (JB) does a lot of things really well. This is how it works: First: the browser sends the headers. This includes a server and file name, and the location of current url. JB reads this. If the server or file name look like an ad, the real web server (for example DoubleClick) never gets contacted and a dummy file is sent from JB to your browser; a couple byte html page or 1x1 transparent gif. Second: if the server and file name are cool, the headers are sent MINUS (this is important) the referrer tag. This prevents the web server from knowing what url you came from. Third: if the server requests cookie information, JB can decide whether or not to allow it. Depending on JB's settings, you can make that decision based on server. For example, cookies are good for Slashdot so you don't have to log in each time. Others are not allowed by default. In another words, DoubleClick doesn't even know you exist if JB is set up. As a side note, Altavista's and the Simpsons Free Internet ads are blocked by JB because they use the Internet Exploder ActiveX control to show the ads on the screen. Just an ironic side note is all. Ozwald |
| Re:Bad (Score:2) by jsm (james@jmarshall.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:21AM EST (#128) (User Info) http://www.jmarshall.com |
| Yes! If I had points I'd moderate you up. If installing a CGI script somewhere is easier than installing the Junkbuster, then see my CGIProxy. Along with proxying pages, it can filter ads with either your own blocklist or a default one. |
| EVERYONE E-MAIL THESE ADDRESSES (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:31AM EST (#142) |
| And let them know you you REALLY feel, okay? support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; Go for it!!! |
| Re:EVERYONE E-MAIL THESE ADDRESSES (Score:4, Funny) by sterno (sterno@bigbrother.net) on Wednesday January 26, @01:56AM EST (#171) (User Info) http://www.bigbrother.net/ |
| I'd love to e-mail them but for some reason my firewall was just recently configured to block every IP address associated with doubleclick.com. Could you e-mail them once on my behalf? :) --- |
| Re:EVERYONE E-MAIL THESE ADDRESSES (Score:1) by niagaracyber on Wednesday January 26, @09:54AM EST (#325) (User Info) |
| What if the pro-privacy community dug up names and all kinds of personal info on the executives involved in making these decisions at Double-Click, and spread it all over the net? Sort of a taste of one's own medicine. Corporations don't feel anything, people do, and the people who make these kinds of decisions - and who lie about them - often feel they can act with impunity. -Dave |
| Webwasher is a free proxy for windows boxes (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:29AM EST (#207) |
| There is also a Webwasher from Siemens, which is for Windows and it's free. You can find it here, http://www.webwasher.de. |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Keepiru on Wednesday January 26, @10:15AM EST (#329) (User Info) |
| Alright, I'll admit I replied to this so that I could be near the top, but, instead of just blocking the ads, why not screw up thier database? The database is based off of the number in the cookie, that is how it identifies you, why not change it every 5 minutes, to a new random number, a simple cron job should do the trick, of for the more ambitious, take an active approach and create scripts that actually go out and give them false information. |
| Re:Bad (Score:2) by orabidoo (see@my.webpage) on Wednesday January 26, @11:04AM EST (#352) (User Info) http://www.iagora.com/~espel/index.html |
| who needs a proxy! just 1) delete your entire cookie file once a day or so, and 2) stick the 50 or so biggest ad servers in your /etc/hosts (that's \windows\hosts for you windows users), assigned to a bogus IP like 127.0.0.2. start with ad.doubleclick.net, and add hosts as you see ads (under netscape, right-click to "copy image location") in general, cookies are OK, and quite useful, for short-lived browser/server interaction state keeping. There is no real need for long-term cookies; at worst you'll have to enter a password a few times more. And clearing your cookie file very effectively dissociates any further browsing from any profile doubleclick may have of you. |
| Re:Bad cookie, bad bad bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:22PM EST (#385) |
| I empty my cookies every day or so any way (well, I don't exactly empty it, I keep /.'s, Hulka's, and a few other important ones. You know what, though? I fell like Bill Gates complaining about someone stealing his nickle, but I HATE it when some lame site I'll never visit again drops a cookie. A byte is a byte. It's MY hard drive, dammit, and I hate the fact that everybody from micro$hit to Joe Momma's Quake with 10 visitors and 11 ads puts crap on it I don't want. How about somebody publish a list of sites that carry doubleclick ads so we can boycott THEM? Also, does anybody have a freeware utility that will accept, then delete a cookie? I'll trade a copy (I hold the copyright) of Artificial Insanity for it. mailto:mcgrew@famvid.com -A.C. (password in the cookie at home) |
| Re:Bad cookie, bad bad bad (Score:1) by Ominous Coward (Coward@mad.scientist.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:48PM EST (#392) (User Info) |
| If you don't want cookies loaded into your computer, change your prefs so that you're asked before a cookie's loaded. Simple, easy, elegant. Ceci ne pas un sig. |
| utility that will accept, then delete a cookie (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:03PM EST (#394) |
"Also, does anybody have a freeware utility that will accept, then delete a cookie?" If you're using Netscape, you can just lock the cookies file ("magiccookie" or something like that on a Macintosh, "cookies.txt" on Win32, "cookies" on Unix) This will allow a site to write a cookie that persists throughout the 'browser session', but disappears when you close the browser. You may be able to accomplish the same thing by locking the 'cookies directory' with MSIE, I haven't tried. |
| Re:utility that will accept, then delete a cookie (Score:2) by um... Lucas (lk@caralis.com) on Wednesday January 26, @04:22PM EST (#432) (User Info) http://www.caralis.com/us/lucas/ |
| I wish that in netscapes prefs, you could list all the sites you go to and specify whether or not to accept cookies from them, so you could always accept cookies from Slash or Amazon but never from AdFu or Doubleclick... Maybe it could happen in Mozilla? |
| Re:utility that will accept, then delete a cookie (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @06:42PM EST (#446) |
| Lynx does. |
| Re: Intermute (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27, @06:02PM EST (#492) |
| >If you're willing to pay ($19.95) and use Windows, try interMute. interMute is terrific & does more than block ads and cookies. Their web site says they plan Linux & Mac support this Spring... |
| Use the Junkbuster Proxy (Score:1) by Ethan Butterfield (primus@bayarea.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:21AM EST (#27) (User Info) |
| http://www.junkbuster.com You can run the proxy server on either a UNIX box or a Win32 one, and it has the ability not only to filter out ad banners, but also to block cookies and to change the browser-type header you send. I've been using it for several months, and it's just peachy. |
| Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes (Score:5, Informative) by KMSelf (kmself@SPAMmeNOT.ix.netcom.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:50AM EST (#94) (User Info) http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/ |
...that's full agreement with all points above. For Linux users, deploying Junkbuster is as easy as downloading the RPM or DEB file and installing it. For Windows users, either NT or Win9x, you can also use the proxy. Both the banner and cookie action are way cool. The following blockfile eliminates pretty darned near all the banner ads (and the sites associated with them if a full site or domain is listed). Note that I've allowed banners at a number of Linux-friendly sites, on principle, though you could change this if you wanted. /*.*/ad/ Those few lines block virtually all the ad traffic I see. For cookies, I block all, then selectively allow a limited number of sites with which I do business. Mostly message boards. There was a really good program Online Profiling on NPR's Talk of the Nation a couple of months back. Other useful resources are Center for Democracy and Technology, and for a look at the other side, NetworkAdvertising.Org and Direct Marketing Association If setting up a proxy is too much for you, the following tricks will prevent a permanent cookie file from being generated:
I'm not sure what the corresponding IE trix are. For Linux, lynx and other browsers can use the link to /dev/null trick. What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? |
| Re:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes (Score:1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:50AM EST (#168) |
| #some additional notes...junkbuster can't block #cookies coming in from SSL connections...so #do this : #blocks all ports ~:80 #except for port 80 ~datek.com:443 #except for SSL to datek (I trade :-) #block these guys too focalink.com ngadcenter.net avenuea.com #block these guys..biggest hit tracker on net hitbox.com #take out the whole domain #biggest sex tracker on net sextracker.com/clit #YAHOO ADS #SAMPLE AD: http://a32.g.a.yimg.com/7/32/31/000/us.yimg.com/a/ya/yahoomail/promo1.gif yimg.com/.*us.yimg.com/a |
| here (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @02:35AM EST (#188) |
| linuxtoday.com/ltbs/* *.bfast.* ads*.*.* ads*.*.*.* *.flycast.* *.netscape.com messenger.netscape.com 209.207.224.220 www.clickXchange.com email.cnn.com /blipverts/ static.wired.com www.hotwired.com rd.yahoo.com nsads.hotwired.com www.tek.com x25.futurequest.net usa.nedstat.net w23.hitbox.com *.hitbox.com view.avenuea.com /*.*ad.info.gif tracker.clicktrade.com rd.yahoo.com as5000.wunderground.com http://www.gamefan-network.com/ www.about.com www.123webhost.com www.hitbox.com www.amazon.com www.findcommerce.com *.valueclick.com www.pcworld.com ngserve.pcworld.com *.flycast.com www.graverobber.com #/*.*cgi-bin images.cnn.com /shop/ /SHOP/ /*.*ad-bin/ /*.*redirect www.cnn.com/cgi-bin/redirect?free_email gc1.freeshop.com pic.geocities.com a196.g.akamaitech.net www.cnn.com/event.ng/ /event.ng/ /jump/ barnesandnoble.bfast.com # Illustrative Blockfile for the Internet Junkbuster # The following line illustrates how to block a port (port 23 is telnet) :23 # for more detail see http://www.junkbusters/com/ht/en/ijbfaq.html#attack # To block a particular URL, you can list it in full (omit the http://): www.junkbusters.com/images/space.gif ads2.zdnet.com ad.uk.doubleclick.net gp2.deja.com web2.deja.com gp.deja.com # Almost all the following examples are commented out. To make them work, # remove the comment so that this: # www7.suckerfinder.com/cgi-bin/compost_tumbler/strayed-in-from=14387 # looks like this: www7.suckerfinder.com/cgi-bin/compost_tumbler/strayed-in-from=14387 gp2.dejan.com gp2.dejan.com g.deja.com q.deja.com *.zdnet.com # You can chop off parts on the left and right to get a broader block: suckerfinder.com/cgi-bin/compost_tumbler/ # To block an entire site, simply include its domain name: # ad.manipumedia.net # patentlyoffensive.com gp.*.* # With no hostname, a pathname blocks regardless of the domain name: # /images/banners/mindless/ # /bandwidth-hogs/ /adverts/ *.valueclick.* ad.*.* # Provided pattern matching option was used in the Makefile (now the default) # you can use patterns such as # the /*.* allows matches anywhere in the URL /*.*banner #/*.*cgi-bin /ads/ *free.email* /*.*click www.dejanews.com/jump/ web2.dejanews.com # /*.*/DespisedProductName.*.gif # you can put * in the domain part only, not the path. www.himemsys.com/ ad*.*.* ads*.*.* ads2.*.* /*.*ads # For more details see http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/ijbfaq.html#regex # The ~ character in column one stops blocking if a previous pattern matched. # The last match wins, so these exceptions are usually placed at the end. # ~mycompany.com image.pathfinder.com |
| Re:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes (Score:2, Informative) by cloudmaster (cloudmaster@cloudmaster.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:27AM EST (#182) (User Info) http://www.cloudmaster.com/cloudmaster |
| As a junkbuster alternative, you can use squid and this redirection script to block out web pages, and also do some cool caching proxy stuff that made squid popular (it's great if you have a masq'd dial-up with a few machines that all check similar pages). My blocklist is available here, and via anonymous rsync at rsync://cloudmaster.com/redir/redir
|
| Re:Yes, solution for IE (Score:3, Interesting) by kimihia (kimihia@YUMMYmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:57AM EST (#197) (User Info) http://surf.to/kimihia |
| For IE, add advert sites to your 'Restricted Sites' zone, and then set that zone not to allow cookies. |
| Re:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes (Score:1) by DrXym on Wednesday January 26, @04:46AM EST (#246) (User Info) |
| Stefan Waldherr maintains a much superior version of Junkbuster here that not only blocks adverts but also replaces them with 1x1 transparent gifs (that stretch to fit if necessary) so you don't see broken links. There are also lots of other little improvements too. He also has an impressive block list that catches pretty much everything. The Windows NT/95/98 version in particular is considerably improved with a menu driven GUI and a natty taskbar icon that twirls when it's doing something! |
| Comparison (Score:2) by KMSelf (kmself@SPAMmeNOT.ix.netcom.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:55PM EST (#418) (User Info) http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/ |
I haven't downloaded Stefan's junkbuster, but reviewing his page:
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? |
| Thanks! (Score:1) by Jake_Man (Jake@TheKeyboard.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:43PM EST (#416) (User Info) |
| I just wanted to drop a note of thanks for the blockfile you whipped up. I've been meaning to play with Junkbuster for some time now, and you just removed my last excuse not to do so. |
| Re:Bad (Score:3, Informative) by Will_Malverson on Wednesday January 26, @12:22AM EST (#30) (User Info) |
Alias their site to 127.0.0.1. If you're running Windows, edit the 'hosts' file. Here's mine, just to get you started: 127.0.0.1 localhostAll it takes is an annoying ad to get your site added to this list. |
| creating the hosts file (Score:2, Informative) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @12:47AM EST (#88) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
If you don't already have a hosts file, the easiest way to create one is to type the following into start, run: notepad C:\windows\hosts. Note that there's a period at the end - that tells notepad not to try to add a .txt extension. Replace c:\windows\ with your windows directory if necessary. Windows allows you to include comments in the hosts file by beginning the line with a # symbol. (For the clueless, when you connect to a web server, it's usually a two-step process: first, look up the IP address for a hostname like "www.slashdot.org" and get an IP address like 209.207.224.42; then, connect to the computer with the IP address 209.207.224.42 and request the webpage. Adding entries to the windows hosts file short-circuits the IP address lookup, so your browser and other programs on your computer think that the IP address for "ads.doubleclick.net" is 127.0.0.1. But 127.0.0.1 is a special address called the loopback address, meaning that it always refers to the computer you're using. Since you probably don't have a web server on your computer, your browser fails in connecting to "ads.doubleclick.net" and displays an empty banner. This attempted connection to your own computer happens without wasting any of your bandwidth, by the way.) -- |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by Skim123 (mitchell@4guysfromrolla.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:26AM EST (#135) (User Info) http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/ |
| You can look at C:\Windows\hosts.sam to see a sample hosts file. No sig right now |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by Trombone8vb (johnbonehead@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#149) (User Info) http://members.tripod.com/Trombone8vb |
| I certainly don't like my privacy being invaded like this. I'd like to try what you've suggested. I'm not going to do it now, because I'm getting ready to go to bed. You said, "Since you probably don't have a web server on your computer, your browser fails in connecting to "ads.doubleclick.net" and displays an empty banner. I do have a web server on my system, sort of. I'm using the MS Personal Webserver to create a site offline. Is this still going to work because the PWS is a POS? Could I just add an extra line to the host file? Or can I not even do this because of the PWS? |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @01:43AM EST (#162) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| It will probably still work, but you'll get hits on your web server looking for nonexistant files like /ad/homepgtable.av.com/sponsor-button/minibadge;sz=230x33;ord=642143351. I tried doing traceroutes to the various "local network" address spaces in RFC 1597, but each of them made my modem light up. Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong RFC.. I'm not an expert at this. -- |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:21AM EST (#202) |
| All IP addresses are routable, even 127.0.0.1. By convention the IP 127.0.0.1 gets assigned to a loopback interface and called localhost. The other "Private Address Range" IP numbers *must* be blocked at the border router. Your machine is trying to access those IP adrresses because it is supposed to. If you get host unreachable or timeouts, then you ISP has done their job properly. If not, find another isp. |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by Erik Hensema on Wednesday January 26, @06:10AM EST (#268) (User Info) http://www.xs4all.nl/~hensema |
There is nothing special to the private ranges, except they're not on the internet. Your PC just looks in its routing table to figure out where it should send packets to 192.168.*, and is sees it should send them to the default route, eg. the internet. Your ISP's router is likely to be configured to drop packets to private ranges, so the trace will stop there. One way or another, your packets aren't going to make it to any machine on the net, they are going to be dropped somewhere. If you want to drop them locally on your machine, you should configure a firewall. In Linux 2.2, it should become something like: ipchains -A input -S 192.168.0.0/24 -J drop And similar lines for the other private ranges. When you're running a private net, you ofcourse shouldn't block the addresses when originating from your own net ;-) ipchains -A input -I ! eth0 -S 192.168.0.0/24 -J drop Or something like that. RTFM. MySQL internal error #241: ESIGTOOSTUPID |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by chrisbolt (chris@/*spamsucks*/nysus.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:50AM EST (#167) (User Info) http://chris.nysus.com/ |
| You can, but it will fill up your error log. If you don't want to fill up your error log, you can just put an invalid IP, such as 192.168.0.1 which is reserved for internal networks. |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @03:24AM EST (#206) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| yeah, that works, but 127.0.0.1 had the advantage that it didn't send any packets over your modem (and therefore didn't cost you any bandwidth). also, some isps (like mine, cox@home) actually do use 192.168.* internally. -- |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by djdead (Seth@blowme.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:38AM EST (#159) (User Info) |
| okay i tried this. i then rebooted. and ads still seem to come up. also i don't have that hosts.sam file. |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @01:49AM EST (#166) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
You might search for the hosts.sam file.. it's possible that your windows decided hosts.sam and hosts should be in a different place. If that doesn't do it, try this procedure:
Hopefully that will work.. btw, adding and modifying hosts is one of those occasional changes to windows that doesn't require a reboot :) -- |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by Jomolungma on Wednesday January 26, @11:08AM EST (#353) (User Info) |
| I've tried this host file thing and everytime I come to a page with a doubleclick banner, my IE gives me a "couldn't find page" page, instead of just ignoring the ad. Does this method not work on IE? Or is it possible my office network that is doing the messin? |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @03:43PM EST (#426) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| Try getting a newer version of IE.. I think IE 5.01 handles it correctly, but if not get IE 5.5 beta (which unfortunately introduces lots of new bugs in areas where features weren't even changed as it fixes some old bugs). -- |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:09PM EST (#379) |
| Hi, I followed these steps, and then went to http://www.altavista.com to try it out... The page took a *long* time to load; it was paused for a long time on the ad. Is there a way to speed this up? Thanks in advance, Thomas |
| Won't work for some (Score:1) by Jenova (rebooting@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:24AM EST (#181) (User Info) |
| Well just a note. That method won't work if you are forced to connect through a non transparent http proxy. |
| Re:Won't work for some (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @08:33AM EST (#299) |
| It should work if you tell your browser not to use the proxy for those domains, or possibly just for the loopback address. |
| On NT it in \WINNT\System32\drivers\etc (Score:2) by bridgette (megaland@at@home@dot@com) on Wednesday January 26, @04:44AM EST (#243) (User Info) |
| On NT it in \WINNT\System32\drivers\etc - bridgette |
| Re:creating the hosts file (Score:1) by Trombone8vb (johnbonehead@hotmail.com) on Thursday January 27, @12:17AM EST (#469) (User Info) http://members.tripod.com/Trombone8vb |
| I've been fiddling with this for a while now. Every time I save it, notepad will only allow me to save it as a .txt file. If I put the period after it, it still comes out as .txt. Is there any extension at all for it? |
| Re:Bad (Score:2) by m3000 (m3000@tampabay_dot_rr_dot_com) on Wednesday January 26, @06:33AM EST (#272) (User Info) http://m3000.1wh.com/linux |
| Alias their site to 127.0.0.1. If you're running Windows, edit the 'hosts' file. And for all you Linux guys, do the same thing, except to the /etc/hosts file. It's very nice to surf with a lot less ads. |
| Re:Bad (Score:2) by PooF (aaron@fish.pathcom.com (remove fish...)) on Thursday January 27, @10:49PM EST (#497) (User Info) |
| Everyones forgeting a bunch of servers. 127.0.0.1 ad2.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad3.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad4.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad5.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad6.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad7.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad8.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad9.doubleclick.net you might want to add in these for when they grow... 127.0.0.1 ad10.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad11.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad12.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad13.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad14.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad15.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad16.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad17.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad18.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad19.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad20.doubleclick.net There ;-) Aaron "PooF" Matthews E-mail: aaron@fish.pathcom.com To mail me remove "fish." ICQ: 11391152 Quote: "Success is the greatest revenge" |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by the phantom (NahenOdersSon@pPomonaA.eduM (figure it out)) on Wednesday January 26, @12:30AM EST (#55) (User Info) http://pages.pomona.edu/~ahenderson/act.html |
| Netscape will allow you to reject all cookies or it can be set to warn you before accepting cookies. This may not be the most efficient way of stopping them, but it does work. To refuse cookies, go to the preferences menu and highlight "Advanced." You can mess with cookies from there. |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Audin (amalmin@halcyon.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:15AM EST (#177) (User Info) http://www.halcyon.com/amalmin/ |
Netscape will allow you to reject all cookies or it can be set to warn you before accepting cookies. This may not be the most efficient way of stopping them, but it does work. This isn't terribly safe, though... letting just one doubleclick cookie through will let them track you from that point on. It's quite easy to screw up when you're trying to work your way into some site which tries to set 20 cookies per page. A much better option is either a blocker like Junkbuster, or aliasing. |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:32AM EST (#239) |
| What about a program to selectively choose those sites you want to accept cookies from and under what terms? I'd like to find something I can set for folks in my company that's easy to apply across a network. Any ideas? |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:12PM EST (#383) |
| Junkbuster. You can specify certain sites that are allowed to set cookies, and any site connected to you over port 443 to set them. You can even allow cookies to go out but no new cookies to be set. Junkbuster is a network server, and netscape or some other browser is the client which can be running on any host with access to your network. Thus on my little LAN, where my Linux system is the gateway to the Internet, my Mac surfs through the Junkbuster server (netscape setting use proxy 192.168.1.1 port 8000) on the PC just like when I use netscape on the PC where Junkbuster is running. It's transparent. Really many thanks are due Jason Catlett the Junkbuster author. |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:58AM EST (#253) |
letting just one doubleclick cookie through will let them track you from that point on. Even if you tell Netscape to not send cookies and delete your cookie file? How is that possible? |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Audin (amalmin@halcyon.com) on Thursday January 27, @04:02AM EST (#480) (User Info) http://www.halcyon.com/amalmin/ |
Even if you tell Netscape to not send cookies and delete your cookie file? How is that possible? It isn't. The original suggestion was to set netscape to "ask befor accepting cookie". Turing cookies completely off and deleting the cookie file should do the trick. |
| Dynamic IP? (Score:1) by ffatTony on Wednesday January 26, @12:34AM EST (#62) (User Info) |
Do they just log IP addresses? What about us with dynamic IPs? Will each site try to palce a cookie and then store that info in the database for the other sites to share? I've never heard of this company, can anyone name some of the sites they provide? |
| Re:Dynamic IP? (Score:2) by MattMann on Wednesday January 26, @12:49AM EST (#90) (User Info) |
| they provide the ads for many many many sites. do a view-image on an Altavista ad, for example. |
| Re:Dynamic IP? (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @12:50AM EST (#93) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| Doubleclick abuses a "misfeature" in http (or is it in the browser implimentations?) that allows sites to attach cookies to images. Since you request the banner from a hostname like ads.doubleclick.net, doubleclick gets to look at your cookie each time you go to a site with a doubleclick ad. -- |
| Cookies with Images? (Score:1) by ffatTony on Wednesday January 26, @12:52AM EST (#100) (User Info) |
Can you tell me more? How does someone do this? (I'm on my way to read the rfc right now) |
| Re:Dynamic IP? (Score:1) by plague3106 (ajj3085@rit.edu.no.spam) on Wednesday January 26, @12:59AM EST (#109) (User Info) |
| A cookie is a small text file that the browser (if set to accept them) will place on YOUR computer. So it doesn't matter if your IP changes the file is still on your computer. If you're running IE5, look in c:\windows\temporary internet files and look for files with the text icon. some will be called cookie:whaterver.com...delete them. (NOTE: that is how amazon remembers your credit card, so if you delete the cookie for amazon, the website will ask for your info again). Now the question is, are you going to trade your privacy for some convience? |
| Re:Dynamic IP? (Score:1) by pen (digdug@hotmail.com?subject=notspam:[subject]) on Wednesday January 26, @02:48AM EST (#191) (User Info) http://altern.org/digdug/ |
| are you going to trade your privacy for some convience? You don't have to. Just use a proxy. Allow only the sites where you want cookies to be enabled, and then deny all others. Try JunkBuster. -- |
| Re:Dynamic IP? (Score:1) by plague3106 (ajj3085@rit.edu.no.spam) on Wednesday January 26, @08:52AM EST (#302) (User Info) |
| Hehe....i know, i was asking the reader? I DO have junkbuster on my system already. I was attempting to drive home that maybe convience is not tht important comparied to privacy but i guess i goofed :) |
| Re:Dynamic IP? (Score:2) by sterno (sterno@bigbrother.net) on Wednesday January 26, @02:29AM EST (#183) (User Info) http://www.bigbrother.net/ |
| Double Click does not actually provide any content. All they are is an ad banner company. You've probably run across countless sites that use double click's banners, but you never noticed. The tracking works regardless of IP address because the information is stored as a cookie. The cookie remains consistent on your browser even if you change IP addresses. --- |
| One possible way? (Score:1) by Petethelate (pdbrooksatpacbelldotnet) on Wednesday January 26, @12:34AM EST (#63) (User Info) http://home.pacbell.net/pdbrooks/index.html |
| What's the best way to block them from knowing who you are without going through an anonymizing site? I'm trying something right now that should/might help. First, I edited the *DO_NOT_EDIT* cookies file that Netscape puts in my directory. Then, I set permissions to read-only. I tried a couple of sites with cookie warning enabled. Even let doubleclick try to set a cookie. It (IIRC) lets cookies run during a Netscape session, but it cannot write the file. This wasn't my idea--read it somewhere else, but never got around to trying it. We'll see if any complications arise. At least, I got back into Slashdot.... |
| Re:One possible way? (Score:1) by Bad-Tech on Wednesday January 26, @12:41AM EST (#74) (User Info) |
| If all you want is not to have cookies be set, you could sybolic link your cookie file to /dev/null. |
| Re:One possible way? (Score:1) by Petethelate (pdbrooksatpacbelldotnet) on Wednesday January 26, @12:50AM EST (#97) (User Info) http://home.pacbell.net/pdbrooks/index.html |
| If all you want is not to have cookies be set, you could sybolic link your cookie file to /dev/null. Well, if I were on a linux box, yep, but this thing is on Windoze. BTW, I tried re-logging and couldn't get back into Slashdot. Evidently, there is some odd reformatting in a cookie file that really does prevent you from effectively editing it. So, for the MK II attempt, I let Slashdot set a cookie, then reset permissions to read only. It looks like a cookie will be set (if you let it), but it's only active for the length of the session. As is my habit, I'll keep manually refusing cookies for the while. I've found very few sites where a long term cookie really needed to be set. I stopped doing business with Amazon, so that's another cookie not needed..... |
| Re:One possible way? (Score:2) by Zach Baker (zach@zachbaker.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:44AM EST (#165) (User Info) |
| Evidently, there is some odd reformatting in a cookie file that really does prevent you from effectively editing it. Yes, it's actually a cute little hack... It's a text file with lines ending in \n\n\r, i.e. two carriage returns, then a line feed: 0D 0D 0A in hex. Most text editors will convert this weirdness to more traditional line endings, at which point Navigator knows some hapless luser has edited the file. Simple solution: use a hex editor (or, of course, a capable enough text editor). For the record, I use the "Accept all cookies" option with a read-only cookies.txt that contains only a small list of hand-picked cookies (Slashdot, for instance). Works splendidly. |
| Re:One possible way? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @08:27AM EST (#297) |
| I edit my cookie.txt file using wordpad. It seems to preserve the weirdness of the file so that it still works with netscape. I've been editing my cookies.txt file for years, making random changes. Changeing true to false, and vice versa, modifying serial numbers, etc. |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Vandermar on Wednesday January 26, @12:43AM EST (#81) (User Info) |
| Apparently, the way the system works it requires another site as a sort of referrer. That site is supposed to give you the option of not participating in the privacy section of their terms. Whether this will happen or not we'll just have to wait and see. The only other options that I can think of would be to not accept cookies or possibly pick through your cookies frequently. I'm not going to sack him straight away. I'm going to kill him straight away. Chef! |
| Re:Bad (Score:2, Informative) by jburroug (jburroug@*NOSPAM*lib.uaa.alaska.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @12:47AM EST (#87) (User Info) http://www.customcpu.com/personal/pointless |
| Since I run an IPMASQ/Firewall, at home, I just use ipchains rules to block out all traffic TO their servers: /sbin/ipchains -A output -j REJECT -d 199.95.207.0/24 /sbin/ipchains -A output -j REJECT -d 204.253.104.0/24 /sbin/ipchains -A output -j REJECT -d 199.95.208.0/24 /sbin/ipchains -A output -j REJECT -d 208.211.225.0/24 I only started doing this a few days ago (kinda profetic eh?) so I know i'm missing a few of the subnets their servers use (my rough guess is about 1 in 8 gets through ;-( ) since i block traffic to their sites, their servers don't even get my IP address ;->. If your machine isn't behind a firewall you control you can still run firewall rules locally to keep out unwanted crap and/or visitors ;-> "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." - Salvador Dali |
| Re:Bad (Score:4, Informative) by Seth Morabito on Wednesday January 26, @01:07AM EST (#115) (User Info) http://www.loomcom.com/ |
I got a full list of their subnets through ARIN, conveniently listed below. Some of these guys may not actually be Double Click, but since they all have "Double Click" somewhere in their names, they all get blocked at my router level: [root@foo /root]# whois "double click"@arin.net [arin.net] Double Click (NETBLK-UU-208-211-225) UU-208-211-225 208.211.225.0 - 208.211.225.255 Double Click (NETBLK-UU-208-203-243) UU-208-203-243 208.203.243.0 - 208.203.243.255 Double Click (NETBLK-UU-204-178-112-160) UU-204-178-112-160 204.178.112.160 - 204.178.112.191 Double Click (NETBLK-UU-204-253-104) UU-204-253-104 204.253.104.0 - 204.253.105.255 Double Click (NETBLK-CYPC-2162306564) CYPC-2162306564 216.230.65.64 - 216.230.65.79 Double Click (NETBLK-UU-63-77-79-192) UU-63-77-79-192 63.77.79.192 - 63.77.79.255 Double Click Computers (NETBLK-DCLICK-T1-BLK) DCLICK-T1-BLK 204.186.74.0 - 204.186.74.255 Double Click Imaging, Inc. (ICO-HST) NS1.ICONETWORKS.NET 204.94.129.65 Double Click Imaging, Inc. (NET-DOUBLECLICK2) DOUBLECLICK2 192.65.80.0 Double Click, Inc. (NETBLK-DOUBLECLICK31-60-18) DOUBLECLICK31-60-18 128.11.60.64 - 128.11.60.127 Double Click, Inc. (NETBLK-DOUBLECLICK-92-19) DOUBLECLICK-92-19 128.11.92.0 - 128.11.92.255 Double Click, Inc. (NETBLK-DOUBLECLICK-210-08) DOUBLECLICK-210-08 199.95.210.0 - 199.95.210.255 Double Click, Inc. (NETBLK-DOUBLECLICK3) DOUBLECLICK3 199.95.206.0 - 199.95.209.255 |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by whatever3 on Thursday January 27, @12:45AM EST (#470) (User Info) |
| Don't forget "doubleclick" (without the space). Here's my preliminary list...if anyone can improve on it, please do so: 199.95.206.0/23 199.95.210.0/24 208.211.225.0/24 208.203.243.0/24 204.178.112.160/27 216.230.65.64/28 63.77.79.192/26 128.11.60.64/26 63.160.54.0/24 208.210.202.0/24 216.94.59.64/27 208.228.78.0/24 208.228.86.0/24 209.167.73.128/27 208.229.75.0/24 208.32.211.0/24 btw, I'll lay $10 on them not actually using more than 10% of these addresses. Bunch of pigs, really. |
| Me Too! ;) Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:19AM EST (#126) |
| I've done the same thing. Input and output from all my know doubleclick addresses is blocked. I also ban flycast.com in the same fasion. I don't remember where I first saw them, but they seemed to be behaving similar to doubleclick. (Note that some of the masks are /23, or some other odd number. When I looked these up on arin.net, there were holes in their assignments as seen.) I hope this is useful to som people. Please post bug reports, too. :) One more thing, don't forget to use junkbuster as well. (My firewall/router redirects port 80 through squid which then goes through junkbuster. Quite nice. :) Here are the addresses I have so far: # undesirable sites, init here for uniformity elsewhere BANNED_SITES="" # doubleclick.net BANNED_SITES="$BANNED_SITES"\ "208.10.202.0/24 216.94.59.64/27 208.228.78.0/24 208.228.86.0/24 "\ "209.167.73.128/27 208.229.75.0/24 208.32.211.0/24 208.211.225.0/24 "\ "199.95.206.0/23 199.95.208.0/23 209.67.38.99 " # flycast.com BANNED_SITES="$BANNED_SITES"\ "216.32.96.0/21 207.240.119.0/24 192.216.105.0/24 216.52.4.0/22 "\ "209.191.72.0/26 207.251.152.224/31 " for BANNED in $BANNED_SITES ; do ipchains -A input -d $BANNED -j REJECT -l ipchains -A output -d $BANNED -j REJECT done |
| All of Doubleclick's Networks! (Score:2) by sterno (sterno@bigbrother.net) on Wednesday January 26, @02:37AM EST (#189) (User Info) http://www.bigbrother.net/ |
| For those of you who want to set up ipchains to block everything vaguely associated with doubleclick, I went over to ARIN and looked up what IP blocks have been assigned to them. This should block everything. On a couple I went a bit overboard and blocked an entire 0-255 subnet when they only had a small chunk. But i figure, better safe than sorry :). Here ya go: ipchains -A output -d 199.95.206.0/24 -j REJECT --- |
| Re:All of Doubleclick's Networks! (Score:1) by Rasha on Wednesday January 26, @04:05AM EST (#227) (User Info) |
| I added all these rules yet I still get some ads. for example at dilbert.com This list may not be exhaustive. |
| Re:All of Doubleclick's Networks! (Score:1) by coolgeek on Wednesday January 26, @12:11PM EST (#380) (User Info) |
| I guess it's just the wirehead in me (and maybe I'm paranoid, too), but I prefer to filter them out at the router, rather than trust an http proxy to block the traffic. |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27, @08:46AM EST (#484) |
| Sites that try the sort of crap that doubleclick does deserve an immediate blocking to bring them to their financial knees. If you're running linux then setup your computer with ipchains and bind-utils. try nslookup ad.doubleclick.net to find their various subnets. So far: ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 199.95.207.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 204.253.104.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 199.95.207.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 199.95.208.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 208.211.225.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 209.67.38.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 208.184.29.0/24 ipchains -A input -j REJECT -s 204.253.104.0/24 If you're running windows, then change the security level for doubleclick.net and doubleclick.com to refuse any cookies. If possible install software to refuse any sort of connection to or from doubleclick. Pretty soon these sorts of companies will need to realize when they've over-stepped their bounds, if not then they'll stay blocked from any computer under my control until they do. Matt. -- Every morning is a Smirnoff morning. |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by lizrd (bumpusad@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:51AM EST (#98) (User Info) |
| The best way I've found to block them (and also speed download times) is to add a line to your hosts file (/etc/hosts c:\windows\hosts) to direct that domain to the null IP address 0.0.0.0 . Then they won't be able to track you and you won't have to look at the adds. ________________ Just because I can |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by plague3106 (ajj3085@rit.edu.no.spam) on Wednesday January 26, @12:52AM EST (#101) (User Info) |
| Or you could just tell your broswer to refuse all cookies...that may break some sites, but so will blocking software...blocking software will give you better control, you can accept cookies only from certain sites and only specific ones from those sites |
| Re:Proxomitron Filter (Score:1) by seoman70 (seoman.Green.Eggs@zinkproductions.Spam.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:09AM EST (#116) (User Info) http://thornvalley.zinkproductions.com/ |
| I've gotta put in a plug for a filter that I'm fond of: The Proxomitron. It is Win32 only (unfortunately; if you use a different platform, Junkbusters is probably the way to go), is much more user-friendly than JunkBusters, and probably just about as configurable. Since it is a proxying filter, it works with all browsers. Hey, it's even skinnable. :) [Seoman] "A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking." |
| Yet more proof that COOKIES AND JAVA ARE EVIL!!!!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:17AM EST (#124) |
| Keep cookies and java(script) disabled and keep yourself safe. Always be anonymous. When it's necessary to create accounts (like with New York Times web site), always supply bogus data, bogus names, and bogus email. For truly evil sites that require a valid email address to mail your real password back to, which you must receive before access is granted, get an anonymous throw away account (yahoo, hotmail, etc.) to receive this password. Never give out any real information. For regular email, use anonymizers (replay.com). Use SSL proxy servers to mask yourself behind. They are all against you. If some site needs geographical data (like to get TV listings), give zipcodes near you, but not your actual one. Within 50 miles is good enough for TV. And for better security use combinations of the above to anonymize yourself better. Chain through many proxies, remailers, anonymizers, preferable located in many different nations to make tracking you a logistical and bureaucratic nightmare. Go through nations that don't like your nation to deliberately hamper trace attempts. Would Cuba or Serbia help the US attorney general track down some h4x0r? Or Libya? Take advantage of political strife to hide yourself. As for your ISP, dynamic IP is your enemy (though static IP assigned only to you is worse). Dynamic IP can be linked to specific phone calls. Go for multi-user shell ISPs that have many users all logging on and off of the same machine (IP). Prepay service with money orders (use false name on them). Get the address off of a (distant) streetlight controller box and give that to the ISP as your home address. Surf from a laptop via telephones in motel rooms. Pay cash for your stay. And move around a lot. If you need to make LD calls, get one of those phone cards from the vending machine at 7-11. Using crypto wherever possile goes without saying. Use "n/a" and your name and company name for all software you install on your laptop, and bogus addresses. You never know what MS is sending back to the black helicopters. Do all of this and keep the information goons in check for another day. B1t Thr45h3r, |
| More privacy tips... (Score:1) by guardian-ct on Thursday February 03, @09:10AM EST (#515) (User Info) |
| Also, never post to slashdot using your real name. Build a real firewall around the inside walls of your apartment. Design carefully, so that a few pyrotechnics can start a fire that will burn all the evidence, even if the feds get in. Lock all food items in the refrigerator. (sorry, too much conspiracy theory) |
| E-MAIL them NOW!!!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#147) |
| support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; |
| even better (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @09:13AM EST (#307) |
| I'll post that list to alt.sex and alt.2600 for the spam bots to pick up :) |
| Better Yetter (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28, @11:41AM EST (#503) |
| Sign those addresses up with XOOM. They (XOOM) will sell the addresses to every company on earth. |
| Netscape Configuration (Score:1) by Fellgus (wiz@post2.tele.dk) on Wednesday January 26, @03:43AM EST (#214) (User Info) http://www.cs.auc.dk/~larsch/ |
| Now how do they track you? Using cookies of course. In netscape, you can disable cookies from other hosts than the page being viewing. This effectively blocks Internet-wide tracking like doubleclick.net. Host cookies are still allowed, which I think is OK. -larsch |
| Re:Netscape Configuration (Score:2) by Mr. Slippery (tms@spambefuddler-infamous.net) on Wednesday January 26, @06:10PM EST (#442) (User Info) http://www.infamous.net/ |
In netscape, you can disable cookies from other hosts than the page being viewing. This effectively blocks Internet-wide tracking like doubleclick.net.NO. IT DOES NOT. Sorry to shout, but I fear many people share the same misapprehension. Cookies can be attached to images as well as to web pages. By attaching cookies to banner ads or invisible GIFs served from a common source, servers can pass information about you between themselves. Since the cookie comes from the same source as the image, the "Only accept cookies originating from the same server" option will gladly accept them. You must block or delete cookies if you wish to prevent this tracking. (Also note that even the mighty, mighty Junkbuster won't protect you fully - cookies can still get thru in Javascript and SSL.) For a detailed explanation see Chapter 9 of Phillip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing (scroll down about halfway for the relevant section). Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe |
| Re:Netscape Configuration (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, @06:30PM EST (#512) |
| To Stop Doubleclick I simply deleted all my cookies. Then I went to the two places That I wanted to recognize me. I verified that I only had cookies from where I wanted, then changed the file attribute on my cookie file to read only... A low Tech solution... BTW Who uses Doubleclick? I was surprised to find it on my favorite web site cnet.net, www.nydailnews.com, anybody think of keeping a list of sites that use it, then complaining to the sites ? |
| Re:Netscape Configuration (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, @06:51PM EST (#513) |
| Great idea, but I think you meant cnet.com. How about a simple program called Doubleclick catcher, that blocks and makes one aware of a doubleclick attempt. |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @05:46AM EST (#263) |
| It's all quite simple really :- bash-2.03$ cat /etc/hosts # Entry to stop doubleclick badness 127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net bash-2.03$ Now, is it just me, or is this so blindingly obvious that you guys really should have thought about it before. :)) And what's more this will actually work on Windoze boxes as well (yes, Win95 and up does have a c:\windows\hosts file if you want one). Only problem with this technique is if you aren't running a httpd on localhost, you might get some browsers complaining all the time, and even if you are running httpd, your logs will start looking weird, but at least you're not getting ads, doubleclick aren't getting your hit, your privacy isn't being invaded, AND you're not spending 20 bucks on some badly written code that will 'junkbust' - whatever that is. :) |
| junkbuster is "free" code. (Score:1) by guardian-ct on Thursday February 03, @09:17AM EST (#516) (User Info) |
| No payment of 20 bucks necessary. Just download, compile, and install (well, maybe not That easy...) Someone else out there has modified the junkbuster code to return 1x1 blank GIFs in place of banner ads. www.junkbuster.com (basic junkbuster code nearby) www.waldherr.org (blank GIFifier) Junkbuster does have a logging function, but you can turn most of it off if you like. If you turn off all the debugging log functions, the only things left are "program started" sorts of log entries. If you turn them all on, everything that passes through the proxy gets logged, including all the data from the http connection. You can be your own paranoid delusion, and try to track yourself down. enjoy... |
| Simplest solution. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @06:15AM EST (#270) |
| Set doubleclick.net to point to 127.0.0.1 Doing this is easy just stick the following entry into c:\windows\hosts :- doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 In most linux distros i think the file is /etc/hosts I did this ages ago as i pay for my bandwidth and dont like recieving banner ads. |
| foil double click by... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @09:20AM EST (#309) |
| using www.cyberarmy.com, www.anonymizer.com free services of allowing you to go through their proxies (you look like your coming from www.cyberarmy and your name is cyberarmy, and you live at cyber army etc)... it will slow your browsing down abit, but you will remain anonymous, even more so than now... you could also go to www.zdnet.com and look for their privacy pages... they have some good links to US NAvy pages that will do the same thing. It's a military excercise in encryption which keeps you commpletely in the dark to others |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @10:20AM EST (#331) |
| i am almost sure their system works with cookies. so going into the browser properties and disabling them should do the trick. --AC (too lazy to register) |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @10:53AM EST (#347) |
| In the M$ Windows world, there is a utility called CookiePal from Kookaburra Software http://www.kburra.com that allows you to selectively accept and reject cookies. It also allows to always or never accept a particular cookie. I have found this to be very useful, because there are some sites that I need to go to that require cookies. *I am in no way associated with Kookaburra Software, except that I use their software. |
| Need cookie control in browsers (Score:1) by skelter on Wednesday January 26, @11:22AM EST (#362) (User Info) http://www.skelter.net |
| We need to demand selective cookie control in our browsers! -- They say you die a little bit each day. Have a nice day! |
| Re:Bad ... You could always enter the lion's den (Score:1) by Buskaatt on Wednesday January 26, @11:50AM EST (#369) (User Info) |
| Go to http://www.doubleclick.net/optout/default.as and set your cookie to OPT_OUT. You lose your PID and its relationship to the Abacus database. |
| Re:Bad (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @11:55AM EST (#372) |
| Where exactly do the banner sites get the info from? I've entered bogus info in most places, i.e. netscape's identity section and windows' user registration during installation. The only place where I entered real info was when I created my user under Linux. Would it be possible for them to get the info from there? |
| Re:Bad -- use Muffin (Score:1) by boyns on Wednesday January 26, @12:32PM EST (#389) (User Info) |
| Muffin can filter out doubleclick and much more. It's very powerful, allows users to write their own filters in Java, runs on linux/win32/mac, and it's freely distributed under the GPL. http://muffin.doit.org/ |
| Re:Bad (Score:1) by Dimes (Dimes@fake-email.duh) on Wednesday January 26, @01:26PM EST (#402) (User Info) |
| This probably doesn't help much, but on my machines doubleclick.net resolves as 127.0.0.1, Not sure if this screws with the tracking info.....but it sure is nice not to have to wait for the adds to come up ;-) dimes |
| ummm... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:14AM EST (#4) |
| Shall all the ISP's start firewalling DoubleClick at the router level? |
| Just e-mail them, and let them know how you feel! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#148) |
| support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; |
| Router-level blocking (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @05:07AM EST (#257) |
| We already do at my company, all routers are configured to block ad sites such as doubleclick. Advert companies (online or not) do really suck anyway. |
| SECOND (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:14AM EST (#6) |
| #RIT OWS * LET THAT BE KNOWn FEAR US |
| first post (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:15AM EST (#7) |
| first post doodz |
| E-mail them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:32AM EST (#145) |
| support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; |
| first post--i think (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:15AM EST (#8) |
| I think this is the first post, but anyway... this is BS... This just proves my theory that the commercialization of the internet is the worst thing to happen to computers. wow... the internet's on computers now... |
| *** IMPORTANT: e-mail them **** (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#153) |
| support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; 4 543 |
| 1st? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:15AM EST (#9) |
| Hmmm... |
| Re:1st? *** EMAIL THEM *** (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#151) |
| support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; eee |
| Enough with the complaining... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:15AM EST (#10) |
| How can we avoid that tracking? I mean... What can *I* do on *MY* computer to avoid them knowing who I am? Shutting off cookies isn't an option at all, nor is manually filtering all my cookies. |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:17AM EST (#17) |
| How about pouring hot grits down your pants... 11th post... Yee-UHh.. |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:20AM EST (#24) |
| Check out Zero Knowledge's new software at http://www.freedom.net for anon surfing while still using cookies |
| Avoid it or destroy it? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:30AM EST (#56) |
| Better than figuring out how to avoid it why not figure out how to destroy it and make it illegal? Why not make an example of these bastards so that no one will ever want to do this shit again? THIS IS BIG BROTHER. They are tracking everything you do, what you look at, THEY KNOW. This is so fundementally wrong. We need to organize ourselves and stop them. Immediatly. |
| PISS THEM OFF (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#150) |
| support@doubleclick.net; info@doubleclick.net; hostmaster@DOUBLECLICK.NET; acct_payable@DOUBLECLICK.NET; ang@doubleclick.com; root@doubleclick.com; webmaster@doubleclick.com; www@doubleclick.com; web@doubleclick.com; sales@doubleclick.com; dns@doubleclick.com; dcquestions@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; kryan@doubleclick.com; koconnor@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; lianuly@doubleclick.com; csaridakis@doubleclick.com; drosenblatt@doubleclick.com; ptsigrikes@doubleclick.com; scollins@doubleclick.com; jepstein@doubleclick.com; dmerriman@doubleclick.com; bsalzman@doubleclick.com; wmillard@doubleclick.com; jblum@doubleclick.com; |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:08AM EST (#229) |
| Why can't you shut off cookies? I do. |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:1) by m3000 (m3000@tampabay_dot_rr_dot_com) on Wednesday January 26, @06:41AM EST (#275) (User Info) http://m3000.1wh.com/linux |
| Because a lot of cookies are very usefull to me. For example, thanks to cookies, I only have to log in once to Slashdot. Or it saves my preferences at places like zdnet.com and other personalization sites. It also saves some of my login's and passwords to certain sites, which, while I guess would be a security risk to yall, I trust my family. Of course, I could selectivly get cookies, but I tried that once, and spent about half my time clicking "no" to 5 at each website I visted, totally wasting my time. I don't really mind cookies when they're useful, it's just that sometimes they're not. |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @10:25PM EST (#465) |
| Browsers need to enable a "cookie zone" feature. This way you can deliberately add the useful sites and make all others not bother you at all with the question. |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27, @09:47PM EST (#495) |
| Internet Explorer 5 has this feature. In addition to general Internet and Intranet security settings, you can define custom security settings for Trusted Sites and Restricted Sites. All you have to do is add sites you trust to Trusted Sites, then disable cookies for Internet sites generally (and Intranet sites, if you don't trust your local network; they're disabled by default for Restricted Sites, which is a good place for sites you definitely don't trust). |
| Re:Enough with the complaining... (Score:1) by atholbrose (cinnamon@one.net) on Wednesday January 26, @08:01AM EST (#288) (User Info) |
| If you go to www.doubleclick.com, click on "privacy policy" and follow a few more links, tey can send you an opt-out cookie. It sets your doubleclick user ID to "OPT_OUT". Is this good enough? I dunno. I'm going to see, though. |
| Rights? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:16AM EST (#12) |
| You have no rights online! Ask any OSU computer user! Taylor 5 represent Napster RIP |
| cookies... (Score:1) by JustShootMe (rmilleratduskglowdotnospamdotcom) on Wednesday January 26, @12:16AM EST (#13) (User Info) http://www.duskglow.com |
Isn't it possible to reject any cookies from doubleclick.com? Not that I think this ia good thing, I think it's abhorrent. But one would think that's one way to combat it... If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't. Catch your very own geek - http://www.singlegeek.com |
| Re:cookies... (Score:2, Informative) by Jonathan C. Patschke (jp@nospam.totalaccess.net) on Wednesday January 26, @01:43AM EST (#161) (User Info) http://celestrion.totalaccess.net/ |
| It's ``easy when you know how''. If you've got (or use) a Linux box nearby, and have an Ethernet card in it and your PC, it's possible to build a firewall and use the Squid web-proxy to block all content from DoubleClick.net. The blocker I use is available at http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/adzap/index.ht ml and makes my "Internet Experience" far more enjoyable as it blocks almost all banner ads, and even kills a decent number of popups and consoles. Since my browser cannot make a connection to DoubleClick.net, I cannot trade cookies with them. Oppress Frank Rizzo on Slashdot. Moderate him to Hell. |
| An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by Tsian on Wednesday January 26, @12:16AM EST (#14) (User Info) |
| This is quite obviously a horrendous invasion of privacy on the part of doubleclick, and a boycott (of sorts) should begin immediately. I would presume that very few users want to be in the doubleclick database, and as such i submit a simple sollution. Simply put the doubleclick domain (in ie, i presume netscape has a similar feature) into the restricted sites area, and adjust security in that zone as necessary to as not accept cookies. Without light there is no darkness. Without darkness there is no light. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by Binar1 (use_my_public_key) on Wednesday January 26, @12:25AM EST (#42) (User Info) |
| Might want to add *.flycast.com to that restricted list, too. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by fougasse on Wednesday January 26, @12:55AM EST (#103) (User Info) |
No, don't add flycast to that restricted list. This discussion is about the privacy violations of DoubleClick. I agree that what they're doing is a violation of privacy and that they should certainly be boycotted because of it. But you certainly can't extend that argument to "block all advertising". Flycast, for example, has a privacy policy that explicitly forbids associating personal information with your website-viewing profile. Advertising is increasingly unfashionable to defend, but if it weren't for advertising, much of the content on the Internet wouldn't exist. Without advertising, it is essentially impossible to put a useful page up on the web and not lose money. The only real alternative is paying for content... now which would you prefer? If users start blocking ads, then sites which advertise will make less money. As it is now, ad-blocking is generally restricted to techies, people who use the Web a lot and know a lot about it too. And so if this demographic (or psychographic, I'm not sure which applies here) blocks ads, sites which appeal to this demographic (to use advertising terms) will receive less revenue per visitor. That is, tech sites will make less money. Or, in other words, there will be fewer tech sites. In an Internet where content is almost universally supported by advertising, no advertising simply means no content. (And let me also point out that there's a banner at the top of this very page...) |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @02:53AM EST (#196) |
| Without advertising, it is essentially impossible to put a useful page up on the web and not lose money False. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by fougasse on Wednesday January 26, @09:54PM EST (#461) (User Info) |
| Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for your in-depth response. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:52AM EST (#218) |
| As for Flycast, well... things can change. It takes a minute to change the policy. Every ad I've come across (including the ads at Slashdot) end up to my shitlist. I don't want to see them. So yes, I'd say put Flycast to your blocklist and sleep easy. Without advertising, it is essentially impossible to put a useful page up on the web and not lose money. Right, but wrong. There are many, many useful sites which do not advertise, for example www.gnu.org There are no banners there. And as for content, it's the top. Excellent tools. In an Internet where content is almost universally supported by advertising, no advertising simply means no content. It is not completely like this, and it would not have to be like this at all. It is sad to see the Internet gradually turn into a mindnumbing TV-like apparatus simply because "there can be no content unless you advertise". That is no free speech. It is free speech for those who have the money, because "you sing the songs of those whose bread you eat." (And let me also point out that there's a banner at the top of this very page...) I've felt so much better after I installed Waldherr's version of junkbuster. Windows-users might want to look at an easy-to-use and gratis Webwasher. Install them today and spare yourself from that corporate brainwashing... |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by fougasse on Wednesday January 26, @10:08PM EST (#462) (User Info) |
| Right, but wrong. Oh no. Not paradox, please. I hate those. There are many, many useful sites which do not advertise, for example www.gnu.org There are no banners there. And as for content, it's the top. Excellent tools. I didn't say that there were no good sites without advertising... I said that you usually couldn't put up a good site without advertising and not lose money. And the only reason GNU does not lose large amounts of money is that they receive grants and donations. Grants and donations can't sustain more than a minuscule percentage of the Web... I assume you don't want search engines to have PBS-style pledge breaks. (We'll get back to your search in just a few minutes now, but wouldn't you love this novelty AltaVista heated blanket, available at the $85 level?) It is sad to see the Internet gradually turn into a mindnumbing TV-like apparatus simply because "there can be no content unless you advertise". That is no free speech. It is free speech for those who have the money, because "you sing the songs of those whose bread you eat." The cases in which advertising would limit free speech are very rare. But they certainly do exist. This is the case in many other media, though -- newspapers with, for instance, anti-capitalist views cannot be supported by advertising. So these newspapers either charge readers or operate at a loss (and solicit donations). The same is applicable to the Internet; nobody said that you can't put content up without advertising, only that you have to find an alternative revenue source or operate at a loss. And yes, as is the case with other media, this will make it more difficult to make anti-advertiser views heard. Capitalism inherently limits some forms of free speech, and this is one of them. However, without advertising, speech would be much more limited: those without enough money couldn't operate a web page. A case of "you can only sing if you have bread". That, it seems to me, would damage free speech much more. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by dhml on Wednesday January 26, @07:46AM EST (#285) (User Info) |
| Question: if flycast are innocent why have I just found a flycast cookie in my file? What possible innocent use is it to anybody? Another question: anybody used CutTheCrap (filter proxy)? I have it installed & I thought it was working (don't know how old the cookies are). Any reason to trade it for junkbuster which seems to be the favourite here? Michael |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by fougasse on Wednesday January 26, @09:44PM EST (#457) (User Info) |
| Because cookies are not evil by definition. Cookies are used to, among other things, track which ads you've seen and which ads you tend to click on. Calling this a privacy violation is going overboard -- what private information is revealed? Is the fact that the user at IP 112.43.82.48 has already seen the ad with the dancing penguin and tends to click on ads about food a serious violation of your self? |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by dhml on Thursday January 27, @05:12AM EST (#482) (User Info) |
| Clearly the above scenario is not a violation of self: however it is of no possible __benefit__ to me (the point of cookies) and could concievably be used for targetted marketing etc if the the info ever got married up with any of my pid. Bottom line: I do not think I should be sent cookies unless they are for my benefit eg user preferences. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by kurumi on Wednesday January 26, @01:50PM EST (#408) (User Info) |
| Advertising is increasingly unfashionable to defend, but if it weren't for advertising, much of the content on the Internet wouldn't exist. Without advertising, it is essentially impossible to put a useful page up on the web and not lose money. The only real alternative is paying for content... now which would you prefer? |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by fougasse on Wednesday January 26, @09:53PM EST (#460) (User Info) |
| Your claim that it's fully possible for Internet content to exist without advertising just doesn't ring true. Certainly, small sites will work just fine without ads -- webmasters will happily pay 20 dollars a month to share something they created. BUT this would rule out both larger sites and sites that need to be worked on full-time. It's essentially impossible to run a search engine without ads, for instance: the bandwidth and hardware requirements are so huge that engines would have to either be publically funded (publically funding the Internet is no longer feasible due to its size), display ads, or use micropayments. (Those search engine which operate without many ads today, i.e. Google, run based mainly on venture capital, which certainly is not permanent). So the only remaining alternative is micropayments. I certainly wouldn't want to pay for every search, and I don't think most users would either. You need only look at the introduction of flat-fee, unlimited Internet access: users left per-minute-fee ISPs in huge numbers. These days, virtually all home ISPs offer unlimited access, even the broadband ones. In fact, free, ad-based ISPs are becoming more and more popular these days. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by Mija Cat (acat@despammed.com) on Friday January 28, @01:25PM EST (#505) (User Info) |
| Yahoo did just fine as a search engine before ads. Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by fougasse on Saturday January 29, @06:35PM EST (#511) (User Info) |
| If I remember correctly, that's because it was hosted by a university, and therefore publically funded. This was possible then because the traffic levels that Yahoo received were much, much lower. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27, @10:10PM EST (#496) |
| I've found the most useful web sites by far are university sites (funded largely by the British, American, and other states). Apart from them, I also use the BBC sites quite often (again, funded by the British state). There are exceptions to this: newspapers/news sites, standards organisations, and corporate sites (for documentation, drivers, etc.). Of these, the only ones that rely on advertising are the newspapers/news sites. I suppose you could say that state-sponsored, corporate and organisational web sites lose money, but it would cost much more to published the same information by traditional means, so from that perspective, they're really saving money. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:36AM EST (#211) |
| Don't just boycott the ads, this will take a lot longer. By boycotting any site that contains a DoubleClick ad banner we can force the sites to abandon doubleclick and change banner companies, thus bringing down doubleclick. Boycott and site with a doubleclick banner now! |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by spodpit on Wednesday January 26, @04:57AM EST (#252) (User Info) http://www.spodpit.freeserve.co.uk/ |
| > This is quite obviously a horrendous invasion of privacy on the part of doubleclick, > and a boycott (of sorts) should begin immediately. A possible suggestion for those of us in the UK, which I'd like some input on: www.freeserve.net (and probably other UK sites as well), get there adverts from ad.uk.doubleclick.net - from it's name and where it traceroutes to (pipex.net) it's based in the UK. Is there anyway that we can use the data protection act (think that's the right one) and demand a copy of all the information they have on us. If enough of us do this, it's going to be rather time consuming for them ... Also, if you're a Freeserve subscriber then it might be worth writing an email/letter of complaint to Freeserve suggesting that you're very unhappy about their use of doubleclick and that you're considering switching to another ISP. (Freeserve may not get any money off you directly, but they don't have whine when call minutes are down!) |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @07:12AM EST (#279) |
| It's all explained at: Here I've I got it right, you could request a copy of the information but they are entitled to ask for a small "admin" fee. |
| Re:An Obvious Solution... (Score:1) by Paul Wright (slashdot@verence.demon.co.uk) on Wednesday January 26, @08:27AM EST (#296) (User Info) http://www.verence.demon.co.uk/paul/ |
| Is there anyway that we can use the data protection act (think that's the right one) and demand a copy of all the information they have on us. If enough of us do this, it's going to be rather time consuming for them ... Yes. I think you can at the moment, but you definitely can when the EU directive beomes law. The changes to European Union law will be propagated into UK law effective on 1st March, according to the Data Protection Registrar's website. The subject access rights have been extended: Whereas under the 1984 Act the data subject was only entitled to have a copy of any data processed by reference to him, the new Act states that he is also entitled to a description of the data being processed, a description of the purposes for which it is being processed; a description of any potential recipients of his data and except in limited circumstances, any information as to the source of his data (where available).The website also says:
Depends on whether Doubleclick's address tracking is "legitimate" I suppose... AFAIK, the DPA is criminal law: you don't have to sue them yourself. |
| Another solution (and a rant) (Score:3, Interesting) by B.D.Mills (starmaus@hotmail-You-Know-What-To-Do.com) on Wednesday January 26, @06:38AM EST (#273) (User Info) |
| Doubleclick.net and other unscrupulous online businesses rely on one simple principle for their online profiling to work: that the ID cookie that they send you will always be associated with you. This lends itself to some interesting possibilities if you want to really screw around with their online profiling. The simplest method would be to either block all traffic from doubleclick.net, or frequently go on search-and-destroy missions through your cookie files, looking for doubleclick.net cookies and systematically removing them all from your system. Profiling cannot work if the ID code is no longer valid. Another method that would take more effort to set up but can potentially cause irreparable damage to the usefulness of the cookie as a profiling tool follows. Set up a central web site for doubleclick.net cookies. Users of the site would download special software that swaps cookies. Then the software would upload your doubleclick.net cookie, and you would receive another random cookie back. Swapping cookies like this destroys them as a tracking resource. This isn't illegal, but doubleclick.net may decide to sue the site to force them to stop trading cookies in this way anyway. If this happens, all the users on the site can then launch a class action countersuit against doubleclick.net with the goal of forcing them to stop profiling. For example, does it constitute illegal wiretapping? And does doubleclick.net have a valid end-user licence for the use of the personal information in this way? Everyone, please remember the horrendous Orwellian scenario that already exists when profiling is combined with Web Bugs (also more euphemistically known as clear gifs). Web Bugs are small (typically 1x1 pixel) clear gifs that are found on the bottom of web pages that inform the owners that the page has been loaded. Doubleclick.net already know what pages you visit, a lot more than you think. And it's happening now. Doubleclick.net are not the only net terrorists that are acting this way. They are merely the most prominent, and the first that have actually admitted to the practice. Where I refer to doubleclick.net here, substitute many other ad banner companies freely. If you want to boycott companies, the following need to be boycotted, in order of importance:
-- "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, visionary, c. 1981. |
| Re:Another solution (and a rant) (Score:2) by gorilla on Wednesday January 26, @09:10AM EST (#304) (User Info) |
| I just edit my cookie file and change the cookie number on a random basis. Much simpler than any swaping scheme. |
| Re:Another solution (and a rant) (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @11:03AM EST (#351) |
Random perturbation is most likely ineffective, becuase cookies are probably encoded with an error-correcting scheme --- where given a change of a few bits, the original word can be reconstructed in cubic time. e.g., Hamming codes, BCH codes (which are used in audio CDs) |
| Re:Another solution (and a rant) (Score:2) by gorilla on Wednesday January 26, @04:10PM EST (#429) (User Info) |
| Changing the entire number makes it impossible to reconstruct any number, and it certainly makes it impossible to track me. |
| Re:Another solution (and a rant) (Score:1) by beagle on Wednesday January 26, @05:26PM EST (#438) (User Info) |
| I use a different solution, which I've found to be quite successful thus far. I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned here yet. Delete all entries that you don't want in your cookie file, then make it read-only. This works for both UNIX and Windows versions of Netscape. Anyone know how to do something similar in IE? I then accept all cookies. Voila - no more bother with "do I want this cookie?" Sure, I get tracked around for the short while that I'm running my browser, but since I shut it down every night after work, I don't ever end up with any "junk cookies" - and no tracking worth mentioning! (What good is a profile of 8 hours?) |
| Re: Yet Another solution (and a rant) (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, @05:46PM EST (#514) |
| For IE, I use a shareware called Cookie Pal (http://www.kburra.com/cpal.html). This program can always accept/reject cookies from domains that you specify. Just turn 'Prompt before accepting cookies' options on and let Cookie Pal take over. In fact, Cookie Pal can monitor any process that could put a cookie, like a HTML enabled email program. The best $15 I have spent :) |
| Data Mining (Score:3, Insightful) by oy (oy@DONTSPAM.tangerine.ucs.ualberta.ca) on Wednesday January 26, @12:17AM EST (#16) (User Info) |
| Information gathering is nothing new, everytime you go grocery shopping and use your "Club Card" your grocery purchases are put into a huge databse. Say you buy some pampers... instantly a red light goes off some where and next week you'll be getting mail about baby products.. Building huge data bases on people is extrmley scary, and at present laws don't really exist to protect peoples privacy, or information. Should you be allowed to know i have a history of cancer in my family before i buy insurance from you? |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by dsl (qfyhpuva@lnubb.pbz [rot13]) on Wednesday January 26, @12:30AM EST (#53) (User Info) |
| This is exactly why I stopped shopping at Kroger the day they started having a "Club Card" (well, that and the fact that they raised prices 50% overnight so they wouldn't lose any money on the card discount). It's annoying sometimes since all of the all-night groceries around here are Kroger, and I liked buying food at 2 AM, but I won't patronize businesses that punish me for wanting to maintain a little privacy.
|
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by kurumi on Wednesday January 26, @02:02PM EST (#410) (User Info) |
| This is exactly why I stopped shopping at Kroger the day they started having a "Club Card" (well, that and the fact that they raised prices 50% overnight so they wouldn't lose any money on the card discount) ... I won't patronize businesses that punish me for wanting to maintain a little privacy. I like club cards. I can live another life, and change it frequently. Back when Safeway would try to be personal and read your name, I became Ben Feldstein, and I would always correct the cashier on the pronunciation: |
| Data mining = Big Brother (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:41AM EST (#73) |
| Data mining is so fundementally wrong, I can not believe that it is a legal practice. It disgusts me to know that some corporation has a computer which contains a profile of me which I did not consent to them creating. Big Brother is coming, and unless we do something to stop him now we will not be able to stop him when he gets here. The Corporations are transforming the world into a fascist empire of braindead consumers. |
| America and Corporations (Score:1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:42AM EST (#213) |
| "The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs. Nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them. [...] We should oppose a single and splendid government founded on banking institutions and monied corporations." - Thomas Jefferson "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." -- Abraham Lincoln Let's not forget that one of the major reasons for the American Revolution and everything that followed was to escape from the tyranny of (British) corporations. Our country was originally founded on principles and laws which made The People sovereign and corporations directly accountable and subservient to them. This is what Democracy is about. Self-government. The People taking matters into their own hands. But naturally Private Power has other ideas. The original American ideals were gradually eroded until that infamous and fateful 1886 court decision which essentially reversed the American Revolution, granting rights to corporate entities on par with those of citizens. The world we live in today was most certainly not envisioned by our Founding Fathers. Jefferson and Lincoln would be appalled. |
| Re:America and Corporations (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @11:12AM EST (#356) |
What the hell is wrong with the moderators!? That is an excellent post which deserves at least a 2 for relevance. Jesus Christ, Slashdot is moderated by brain-dead tech-flunkies. Softly, As in a morning sunrise The light that gave you glory Will take it all away. |
| Re:America and Corporations (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @11:19AM EST (#359) |
| Excellent post, dude. |
| Spoofing (Score:2) by KMSelf (kmself@SPAMmeNOT.ix.netcom.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:56AM EST (#104) (User Info) http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/ |
| Most club cards require zero authentication of ID. For years, my local grocery club card was listed as belonging to the CEO of a large IT organization (no, not that one, or that one). If you're familiar with IT operations, Fred Flintstone (etc.), Test User, Test Account, Admin Account, and similar interesting first/last name combinations can be fun to try. What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by crush on Wednesday January 26, @01:19AM EST (#127) (User Info) |
Building huge data bases on people is extrmley scary, and at present laws don't really exist to protect peoples privacy, or information. Nah. That's just paranoia, mostly it's manufacturers and retailers who want to be able to serve you better. They want to be able to respond to the free-market and listen to what their customers are telling them. Companies are often perceived as uncaring, deaf monoliths, but really they're just there to do your bidding. So why are you so scared of them? Like you say, this is nothing new, they're collecting information all the time. What really kills me are things like the grocery cards or airmiles - the bastards are asking us to work for them by providing a false reward. If they can afford to give away the airmiles then they should give them away. The cunning aspect of this tactic is that they've already got enough people doing it so that if you don't then you lose out. I hate it! If I were to sell my shopping data I'd expect a lot more money than that. Save us from the idiots. The only really postive thing that you can do is to fill out false and misleading information voluntarily on as many survey forms as you can, my father introduced me to this idea when I was quite young and they started collecting this data with grocery cards. Soon we had a pretty wacky family to go down on the unimportant cards: 3 bachelors uncles of ages 13, 53 and 93 lived with us and were employed respectively as: a stockbroker (earnings > $100,000 per annum), unemployed, and a garbage-man (30-50,000). There were also more subtle pieces of disinformation, altering the amount of products of a particular type that one was supposed to be buying up or down, some estimatedly reasonable fraction. Perhaps it does no good ( I can see our outlier being eliminated from the data set pretty quickly) but at least it did them no good! |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:2) by sjames (sjames@nospam.gdex.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:48PM EST (#391) (User Info) http://www.members.gdex.net/sjames |
That's just paranoia, mostly it's manufacturers and retailers who want to be able to serve you better. If that's all it is, then DoubleClick and it's business associates would be happy to tell us who is part of the program. No business serves a customer well by sneaking around behind their backs. If they want to listen to what I'm telling them, then they should listen to what I'M TELLING them, not covertly gather information that I'm NOT telling them. Furthermore, unlike many of those programs, DoubleClick not only does this after explicitly claiming otherwise, but they share it around with many other companies quietly. Even if I had some sort of grocery card (I certainly don't!), the information is not available to other merchants the moment I walk into their store. With DoubleClick, it apparently is. This like many other things is marginally acceptable on a small scale but becomes grossly unacceptable when applied on a larger scale. The only really postive thing that you can do is to fill out false and misleading information voluntarily... That's great fun! Von Wilhelm, Hochkis. nationality: German. Occupation: Shepherd. Relation to family: Other. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by Skim123 (mitchell@4guysfromrolla.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:30AM EST (#138) (User Info) http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/ |
| But with the supermarket card, you have the option of using it. With Doubleclick's scheme, you aren't aware that you're being tracked... No sig right now |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by mcrandello (mcrandello@my-deja.com) on Wednesday January 26, @10:47PM EST (#467) (User Info) http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=mcrandello |
| Better than that, I use the temporary card they gave me. The cashier *never* gives me a rough time, I get my discount, and if they ever do ask, I'll let them know I don't want a name attached to my spending habits. Oh, and I pay with cash. No bank cards or cheques. mcrandello@my-deja.com rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by CleverNickName on Wednesday January 26, @02:03AM EST (#173) (User Info) http://superstringtheory.com/ |
| To quote Dale, from King of The Hill: "By now, your name and particulars have been fed into every laptop, desktop, mainframe and supermarket scanner that collectively make up the global information conspiracy otherwise known as...The Beast."
|
| Re:Data Mining (Score:0) by C.Lee on Wednesday January 26, @03:52AM EST (#219) (User Info) |
| >Information gathering is nothing new, everytime you go grocery >shopping and use your "Club Card" your grocery purchases are put into >a huge databse. Er, those grocery store "Club Cards" I use are in a false name dude. So they aren't actually tracking the purchases *I* make, but rather the name that's on the card.... |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:42PM EST (#435) |
| Yeah, if you don't use a credit card and only pay in cash. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by Helge Hafting on Wednesday January 26, @05:53AM EST (#266) (User Info) |
| Building huge data bases on people is extrmley scary, and at present laws don't really exist to protect peoples privacy, or information. Laws exists where I live. Anyone wanting to build a database with information about identifiable persons must get a permission from the authorities. The law was made because of computer databases, but applies to other media as well. Of course there are exceptions for obvious stuff, a company may, for example, keep a payroll without applying for permission. The law also states that you may demand to see your own record in anybody's database, and you can tell them to delete it. I tell telemarketers to delete me from their lists, as required by law. They really don't call back - until the next edition of the phone directory is scanned. (Or whatever they use.) |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by TheTomcat (sean@nbnet.nb.ca) on Wednesday January 26, @08:14AM EST (#291) (User Info) http://riptear.dyndns.org |
| Should you be allowed to know i have a history of cancer in my family before i buy insurance from you? OR, should you be allowed to see how many pounds of red meat I buy each year before selling me Life Insurance? Statistic in insurance should be regulated. I got quoted $4967/year for insurance on my new car. I'm male, under the age of 25. No, I've never been in an accident. Stats prove that I am more likely to get into an accident than females 10 years older than me, so I get shafted. What if stats proved that gays got in more accidents than straights (sorry if straight is considered a slur now... ) or if African Americans (insert politically-correct-term-of-the-week for black people here) got in more accidents than whites? Sorry. I know it's a little OT, but if corporations like double click can gather info on us the same way, who KNOWS what'll happen. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @11:37AM EST (#366) |
| I have a more interesting question. If statistics actually showed the converse, would the rates be adjusted appropriately? What if women actually get in more accidents then men. Would the companies have the guts to charge women more? I wonder what cost these people can bear while holding to outdated notions of responsibility and demographics. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by TheTomcat (sean@nbnet.nb.ca) on Wednesday January 26, @01:58PM EST (#409) (User Info) http://riptear.dyndns.org |
| ok, this is WAY off topic, but: Ever notice that there IS no word for male feminist? Also notice that "sexist" is commonly understood as a male term? Now, I'm no misogynist, but I'm sure we'd see bra-burners at Wawanesa and State Farm if women were charged more based on stats. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28, @03:56PM EST (#506) |
| Should you be allowed to know i have a history of cancer in my family before i buy insurance from you? OR, should you be allowed to see how many pounds of red meat I buy each year before selling me Life Insurance? If I'm the one selling you life insurance, then, yeah. Why would I want to sell life insurance to your fat fucking heart-attack prone ass? Life insurance is cheaper for non-smokers, you know. So lay off the Whoppers, you fat lazy fuck. |
| Re:Data Mining (Score:1) by bobv-pillars-net (bobv-slashdot@pillars.net) on Friday January 28, @05:27PM EST (#508) (User Info) http://www.pillars.net/ |
| I know what you mean. Spent half an hour at a local bank today, on hold with their legal department (long-distance on THEIR nickel) waiting for a legal explanation of why they required my right thumbprint to cash a payroll check drawn on their bank. |
| Filter Plug-In (Score:1) by crashdavis on Wednesday January 26, @12:17AM EST (#18) (User Info) |
| It would seem pretty simple to me for someone to write a plug-in for IE or Netscape which would parse the HTML and remove doubleclick (or some configurable list of domains) image tags. What's the problem with doing this? Another way to do this, although potentially harder, would be to do what was suggested here during the last round of postings and produce a plug-in which would suppress creation of cookies for domains external to the displayed page. Whatever sophistication Doubleclick has in identifying this info, the fact is that *we*are*giving* this information to them with our stupid browsers. Crash Davis "The difference between theory and practice is small in theory and large in practice..." |
| Re:Filter Plug-In (Score:1) by reaper20 (castro@infantry.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:22AM EST (#29) (User Info) |
| Doesn't junkbuster filter out all of this stuff already? I know it blocks the advertisements, but does anyone know if it blocks the information going the other way?? |
| Re:Filter Plug-In (Score:1) by ffatTony on Wednesday January 26, @12:40AM EST (#71) (User Info) |
Another way to do this, although potentially harder, would be to do what was suggested here during the last round of postings and produce a plug-in which would suppress creation of cookies for domains external to the displayed page. Netscape 4.7 already has an option of Only accept cookies from the same server as the page being viewed which is what I think you are refering to. |
| Re:Filter Plug-In (Score:1) by Bastian on Wednesday January 26, @03:22AM EST (#203) (User Info) |
| Netscape 4.7 already has an option of Only accept cookies from the same server as the page being viewed which is what I think you are refering to. I think what you mean is the "Only accept cookies which get sent back to the originating server" option. My understanding of this option is not that it filters out cookies which didnt come from the server that made the webpage, but that it rejects cookies that dont go back to the server that sent them. In this case, since the cookies are coming from doubleclick.net, that option would not filter them out. |
| Re:Filter Plug-In (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:41AM EST (#75) |
| I was thinking the same thing. How privacy conscious is Mozilla? Mozilla is "open source" can't we write privacy/anonymous features directly into it? make Mozilla the anonymous browser?!? afterall my wife(tobe) would be really pissed to find out how many porn sites a REALLY visit :) STUPID DOUBLECLICK JERKS! Mitch |
| 127.0.0.1 (Score:4, Informative) by Will_Malverson on Wednesday January 26, @12:17AM EST (#19) (User Info) |
| I've got all kinds of advertiser addresses aliased to 127.0.0.1. It protects your privacy and speeds up your Internet browsing. It's even possible if you, for whatever reason, use Microsoft Windows, there's a hosts file in the c:\windows (or whatever) directory, that you can edit. However, you do need the most recent version of IE (I don't know what Netscape would do) to make it not go to a full-screen error message on any site that has an ad. Sorry 'bout the heavy MS content. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:3, Informative) by Our Man In Redmond (deepcover@microsoft.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:27AM EST (#49) (User Info) |
| Take a look at the Linux Tips page on Portico. They recently posted a list of servers you can alias to 127.0.0.1 in your /etc/hosts file. I haven't tried it yet but I'm going to. Any chance someone could create a cookie we could all paste into our caches that indicates that every single one of us is the MPAA Executive Offices? Let Doubleclick track them. Somehow I think they might deserve each other. -- Someone you trust is one of us. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:43AM EST (#80) |
| That list has ads.theonion.com... you know they have these ads for a reason?...do you not want The Onion to be around??! Sorry for the English. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:2) by Mr. Slippery (tms@spambefuddler-infamous.net) on Wednesday January 26, @06:30PM EST (#444) (User Info) http://www.infamous.net/ |
you know they have these ads for a reason?...And we block them for a reason. I'm trying to read a page and there's a damn flying monkey zooming all around the top of it, distracting me chewing up my CPU time. No thanks. Want me to know about your sponsors? I won't feel the need to block a simple, plain text "Supporters of this page include...The Frobozz Corp, makers of fine Frobozz Grue Repellent." It might even give me a warm fuzzy feeling towards The Frobozz Corp, that a dancing grue animation never would. Ad banners are dying, and I can't wait to piss on their graves. Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:2) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @01:13AM EST (#122) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| Sorry 'bout the heavy MS content. Nothing wrong with that. Considering that most Windows users aren't aware that they're being tracked, much less that they can opt-out by typing a medium-length URL into their browser, user education is important. And user education starts with the geeks, whether they use Linux, Windows, or any other O/S to surf, figuring it out. Link to the opt-out site from your website. Mention it whenever you discuss internet privacy with your friends. -- |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:07PM EST (#395) |
Another solution that unfortunately only works for internet explorer is to list these sites as "Restricted Sites" under the security settings in internet options. That way you don't get the cookies from them. It's really easy to find where/how this is stored in the registry, so you can export a *.reg file and pass it around. When I have some time I'll probably write a program to clean and ban all the advertisers who've dropped cookies on my system. Using Microsoft internet features to protect privacy - "embracing and extending" my personal cyberspace. |
| 255.255.255.255 (Score:1) by Tom7 (spam-sucks) on Wednesday January 26, @02:47PM EST (#417) (User Info) http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/ |
| 255.255.255.255 works better for me, particularly if you're running a web server on your local machine. All real routers drop these packets immediately (god forbid). Here's my blacklist: ad.doubleclick.net vbn.adbureau.net www.adclub.net imageserv1.imgis.com adforce.imgis.com ads15.focalink.com geo.yahoo.com adproxy.whowhere.com ad.lycos.com adex3.flycast.com imageserv2.imgis.com www76.valueclick.com ads.msn.com oz.valueclick.com ads23.focalink.com adimages.gamespy.com adcontent.gamespy.com If you use linux, set up your own caching name server (faster anyway) and use it. You can probably do something similar (anybody know how easy this is, or do you need to hack the source?) Mac users are out of luck, as far as I know. I'm sure we'd all love to write a Mozilla plugin to keep ads away a little more cleanly -- I'm sure many of us will. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:1) by RickHunter on Wednesday January 26, @03:57PM EST (#428) (User Info) |
Well, I've tried this on my system, following the instructions in C:\Windows\hosts.sam. Didn't affect Netscape at all, even though ping and tracert insist that they're being mapped right. Guess Netscape assumes you're too dumb to know how to use a hosts file. Yet another thing that irritates me about Windows and Windows products. As a note, I am pro-alternative-operating systems. I think Linux and *BSD are all very nice alternatives to Windows. Its just that this machine has a lot of Windows-only software. -RickHunter --"We are gray. We stand between the candle and the star." --Gray council, Babylon 5. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @05:52PM EST (#441) |
| Aliasing to 127.0.0.1 doesn't work. I've seen sites that have arranged so that you don't get the site content if you've got their advertiser aliased that way. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:2) by Cycon on Wednesday January 26, @07:42PM EST (#451) (User Info) http://cogengine.linuxbox.com |
| It's even possible if you, for whatever reason, use Microsoft Windows, there's a hosts file in the c:\windows (or whatever) directory, that you can edit. Under Windows 2000 (and I would assume NT as well) this file resides in the c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc directory, to be exact. |
| Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:2) by Cycon on Wednesday January 26, @08:35PM EST (#454) (User Info) http://cogengine.linuxbox.com |
| However, you do need the most recent version of IE (I don't know what Netscape would do) to make it not go to a full-screen error message on any site that has an ad. Just checked this out and verified it under Netscape 4.7 (again, under Windows 2000 Professional) and it works just fine, that is where ads used to be you just see the broken image box in it's place. |
| am i missing something (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:18AM EST (#20) |
| Ok, I understand logically how they can get your name, age, etc etc but how are they going to know it was you that clicked on their ad and how to correlate your click to your info? Can anybody enlighten me? http://enmasse.penguinpowered.com/ |
| Re:am i missing something (Score:1) by Ravensign on Wednesday January 26, @12:26AM EST (#45) (User Info) |
| They have web site hosts who "cooperate" with them, and when you say give them your name for a service or product, they bacsially tell doubleclick what your cookie number is then they line that up with their direct marketing big database which in all probability has an entry for you already and viola, DoubleClick now knows what cookie goes with who. It's creepy and I don't think it's gonna stand. |
| Re:am i missing something (Score:1) by ffatTony on Wednesday January 26, @12:45AM EST (#83) (User Info) |
hey bacsially tell doubleclick what your cookie number is then they line that up with their direct marketing big database which in all probability has an entry for you already and viola, DoubleClick now knows what cookie goes with who Perhaps I am wrong, but as I understood the cookie rfc, a cookie will only be returned to a site if the address is the same as the site that issued it, thus if xyz.com gives you a cookie, a script at doubleclick.com cannot access it. What I forsee is that when xyz.com gets some info about you, they'll pop it into a shared database and all connected sites will know. As for identifying you when you visit the page, ip-address is the only thing I forsee, unless you give them more info in which to identify you. |
| Re:am i missing something (Score:1) by Aaron Denney on Wednesday January 26, @01:24AM EST (#133) (User Info) |
Perhaps I am wrong, but as I understood the cookie rfc, a cookie will only be returned to a site if the address is the same as the site that issued it, thus if xyz.com gives you a cookie, a script at doubleclick.com cannot access itYes, but they can give out cookies for image requests, and since all of the banner ads come from doubleclick, they can get the cookies. |
| We have no privacy (Not that it isn't obvious) (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:18AM EST (#21) |
| Just wait until AOL-Time Warner buys DoubleClick and controls your personal information, your content, and your method of accessing it. Every day our privacy and freedom is dimished, but what can we do? |
| Takeover (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:42AM EST (#78) |
| Just wait until AOL-Time Warner buys DoubleClick... How about Microsoft and their tons of cash sitting around? They could buy DoubleClick and incorporate it into Windows. Then forget about the workarounds to avoid cookies and so forth. |
| Time to start poisoning those pigeons. (Score:2) by Stormbringer on Wednesday January 26, @01:32AM EST (#146) (User Info) |
| We need a script that will snag one of those cookie-fetches on the way past, find it in the "naughty" list, and modify the serial-number in it to a different value every single time... and then do ten more HTTP hits at the same URL, different serial number each time. Basically fill up that database with trash. More effective than singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant, anyway. |
| Re:Time to start poisoning those pigeons. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @02:49AM EST (#192) |
| BRILLIANT IDEA!!!! Let's take this a step further! Get a list of sites that use Double Click, then feed it into a spidering engine. Then have the spidering engine feed thousanda of the tainted cookies from thousands of sites into Double Click's database! AHAHAHAHAHA!!! I've been looking for a pet project to do. I'm thinking this would be a good opportunity to mess with Java Threads >:) |
| Re:Time to start poisoning those pigeons. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:49AM EST (#215) |
| Aren't there already free Perl spiders... seems like this would take all of 10 minutes to write if you had a list of double click sites... |
| We can Crack and DoS their frigging puters!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:50AM EST (#216) |
| that's right.. DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY |
| Opt-Out (Score:5, Informative) by hernick on Wednesday January 26, @12:18AM EST (#22) (User Info) |
| This is the opt-out link. It will place a cookie on your computer that'll let you opt out of doubleclick's tracking. I am the administrator of a few web caches (I use squid) and I've started blocking web ads a while ago, replacing them by one-pixel blank gifs. It probably fixes the problem... |
| Re:Opt-Out - useful (Score:1) by paled (paled@EATSPAM.home.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:24AM EST (#34) (User Info) |
| thanks. I'm opted out. Aspiring Oracle DBA - Disc Golf enthusiast. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by TeddyR (syousif@iname.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:28AM EST (#50) (User Info) https://www.mav.net/teddyr/syousif/ |
| The thing is... Your way would make it harder for sites that DO depend on ads for revenue. And what if your users wanted to see the page as designed... ads and all... Personally I prefer to have squid "do its thing" normally, but use the Internet Junkbuster chained to a squid proxy. This way your users can select to have an ad-free proxy or a normal proxy. http://www.alug.org/ |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:5, Interesting) by hernick on Wednesday January 26, @12:42AM EST (#77) (User Info) |
| Actually, there is a problem with ads. We pay for bandwith. The stats for the proxies, when merged together, give exactly this: 62.46% Global Hit-Rate 29.63% Doubleclick.net Hit-Rate 03.72% Doubleclick.net KB Transferred By making a simple calculation doubleclick alone is using 7.84% of my bandwith, therefore increasing my monthly costs by more or less that amount. The connections we use have a base cost that's pretty low plus 12$ a gigabyte. So doubleclick (and other ad sites, but mostly doubleclick) is costing us a non-insignificant amount of money ! Now, I'm sure the stats are different than they would in another environement - this is an educational establishement so the sites visited tend to be more often the same, and a normal proxy would probably devote less bandwith to doubleclick.net, and a normal site would probably not pay for bandwith by the gig like we do. The problem is, they're making money without us getting anything in return. I don't feel it's immoral to deprive them of their revenue as long as they won't compensate us at all. I think that if more proxy administrators start doing the same, or perhaps even replacing the doubleclick banners (that's pretty easy to do, and I am considering doing it), doubleclick will have to react and do something. What I'd consider fair is for them to offer us a share of the revenue. It wouldn't have to be big.. And perhaps offer a solution to cache their ads more efficiently rather to get such a low hit-rate. Please reply with any constructive input, I appreciate it :) |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:02AM EST (#112) |
| This is not "your bandwidth". YOU chose to visit the site... in return they would like to MAKE SOME MONEY! Many sites DEPEND on the small amount of income they get from these banners. If you don't want to pay with your bandwidth, then do not visit the site. Please don't op this down, I forgot my nick/passwd |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by spodpit on Wednesday January 26, @05:06AM EST (#256) (User Info) http://www.spodpit.freeserve.co.uk/ |
| > This is not "your bandwidth". It sounds like he's in the UK, where he's paying by the second for his bandwidth (assuming it's either analog modem or ISDN), personally I'd say that makes it his - and if he doesn't want traffic from a certain site using it up, then that's his choice. As for paying with bandwidth - why should *I* pay for the dubious honour of receiving advertising, if you want to send me advertising then I want paying for it. As soon as doubleclick start offering money to offset the money I'd have to spend downloading their adverts, I'll start considering downloading them ... |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by grumpy_geek on Wednesday January 26, @09:49AM EST (#323) (User Info) |
| I'm sure they would be willing to pay for their portion of the bandwidth... Of course you would have to start sending a check back to the website for your bit of the bandwidth.... When was the last time you sent a check to slashdot, paying for the bandwidth you are using? Hmm... I guess someone thought that bandwidth only costs the end user; and that websites are free, as in free beer. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:03PM EST (#375) |
| Another problem with some banner advertisment servers is that they do not give up. I have found that if I close my browser while a site with a banner is showing then frequently I see the banner site trying to send packets to (the now non-existent) browser for quite some time. This can cause the idle timeout not to trigger and thus cause the telephone charges (I am in the UK) to be higher than they should. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @01:26AM EST (#134) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| Doubleclick pays site to site admin can make money (or at least not lose too much money) while providing a free service. User pays internet provider in order to access free web-based service. What exactly is the problem here? -- |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by robl on Wednesday January 26, @01:31AM EST (#141) (User Info) |
| I don't know... I mean. when you factor in the fact that most sites don't charge you to use them, I think it's an okay deal. I appreciate the content on fool.com or slashdot or eetimes. But someone has to pay for the content provider's bandwidth too. The post-scarcity economy hasn't come to the bandwidth market, at least not yet! Now I started to be a hypocrite about two weeks ago when I downloaded internet junkbuster. I primarily wanted a service that would banish cookies from my browsing. But I also got something that would block banner ads... I really have to think about these ethical dilemnas some more. I mean I want content I don't have to pay for, but I just don't want to be treated like a piece of meat by a marketing company, either. I guess your argument might make more sense on spam, where spammers aren't required to pay for the connection that the user must use in order to receive the spam mail, and they don't help to pay for any content either. But, now that I think about it, you are right is that it does take about 70k to download some of these banners that are out there.... |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:5, Insightful) by earlytime (earlrob@mnsinc.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:11AM EST (#175) (User Info) http://www.mnsinc.com/earlrob/ |
| well it's fairly simple to argue that banner-ad clearing houses like double click make the cost of individual banner ads cheaper for the advertiser. Hence the advertiser may buy more ad space on more web sites. Even Taco will tell you that without ad revenue, slashdot would have gone bankrupt long ago. Advertising is not an inherently bad thing. At it's most basic level, it allows producers to educate consumers about their product offerings in a relatively non-intrusive way. Consider commercials versus tele-marketers. I'd prefer that the companies calling about all their crap would do commercials/banner-ads instead of calling me. That way I won't feel so violated when they pitch their products. When you call me day and night about some crap, even something I might want to buy, I can't just say "I don't wanna hear it, so I won't answer the phone." I pay for my phone, and I do expect that friends and family wanting to talk to me will call me from time to time. With commercials/banner-ads, I can choose to watch the ad, switch the channel, scroll the page, etc if I dont't want to hear your pitch. What I find happens often with both commercials and banner ads, is that since I only see them on the channels/sites where I have an interest,(as opposed to just being displayed on my screen from time to time the aol or geocities way) they are far more likely to be an ad for something I'm interested in. So I'm more likely to listen, read, inquire + buy. In essence what I'm saying is that yes, we do get something back from advertising in the form of:
Of course, you are free to chose whether you, or the network you manage, will participate in the whole banner ad/cookies thing. I would be cautious however in choosing to replace banner-ads with banners of your own making. You could be opening a can of worms in regards to redistributing or modifying the copyrighted content of a particular web site. Several web sites have won lawsuits claiming that by altering their content, or putting it in a frame, you are violating their copyright on the content. It's the notion that ISPs have "common carrier" status that grants them some immunity from this kind of suit. However, if you start selectively modifying the ads that come through, you may be crossing that line from ISP for your students, to being a content provider. I would simply allow or deny all ads to keep that line clear. Otherwise, you could simply sell the (cached) banner ad space to advertisers who want to reach your students. Again, an extremely risky proposition. -earl
|
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by Helge Hafting on Wednesday January 26, @06:03AM EST (#267) (User Info) |
| Consider commercials versus tele-marketers. I can't just say "I don't wanna hear it, so I won't answer the phone. You can - with caller ID. With ISDN you may even set the pc up as a selective answering machine. You can have the pc identify telemarketers by their number and deliver a rude message, while letting the phone ring normally for others. Whenever a new telemarketer get through - add their number to your own datbase. Databases can work for "the little man" too. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by alecto (mwp@acm.org) on Wednesday January 26, @07:42AM EST (#284) (User Info) http://www.cstp.umkc.edu/~mpasser |
Except for the regrettable fact that telemarketers have a talent for placing calls from outbound call centers in areas that show up as "out of area." (This avoids the stigma of having blocked caller ID.) I regret that I can't find a citation, but I've heard of at least one instance of RBOCs marketing caller-ID proof outbound lines to telemarketers. Anecdotally, this certainly seems true here. There are countermeasures against telemarketers, just as there are for banner ad tracking: Telemarketing Scum Page technical data. That link contains references to patents on call progress detection and tips on foiling predictive dialers. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by LetterJ (jwynia@earthlink.net) on Wednesday January 26, @10:19AM EST (#330) (User Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~jwynia |
| In my area, it seems that anyone who is calling from behind a "corporate phone system" comes up "UNAVAILABLE". Unfortunately, that's also what several of my relatives and friend's come up as. The supreme irony came when US West (the provider of my CallerID) called to pitch me additional services and came up as "UNAVAILABLE". LetterJ "If you can't explain it to an 8-year-old, you don't understand it"--Albert Einstein |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by sarchasm on Wednesday January 26, @03:05PM EST (#419) (User Info) |
| Even without caller-ID, you can filter out most phone spam. Most of the time the caller uses an automatic dialer which introduces a noticable delay into the conversation. Answer the phone, say hello... if there's no answer within 1-2 seconds, hang up. High accuracy, and if it was a real call and they really want to talk to you, they'll call back and pay attention this time! ---------------- Overheard: "Aww, why'd you go and install Windows on a perfectly good machine?" |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:51AM EST (#217) |
| Send them an invoice for your time and bandwidth. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by fated (bit@me.now) on Wednesday January 26, @09:38AM EST (#317) (User Info) http://fated.pitfall.org |
| now we're talking ad space. Think about TV: approximatly 3 commercial breaks in a half hour, say 3 minutes a break (I believe I'm under the real numbers). That's 18 minutes in a half hour, or 30% of broadcast time. Do you pay for cable? Magazines and newspapers aren't quite as bad, but they, too, get frustrating. Fall out ads slips and full page spreads probably account for between 5% to 25% of magazine page space (those are total guesses). In relation, 7.84% ad space on the web doesn't seem quite as bad. Also, these databases seem to be a more specified "target audience" type of idea. Find out who goes where and send advertizements on similar products. It's the same with magazines: you buy MagX one day, get an ad for MadY the next. (also, the grocery store card someone mentioned). It's applying old practices to a new(er) medium. At least, that's what Fate says... At least that's what Fate says... -cc- the guy in the hat |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:2) by plunge (cosym@yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @09:40AM EST (#319) (User Info) http://cosym.net |
| You're missing the point of what the ads are there for in the first place- to pay for the page you're viewing. Doubleclick doesn't put it there and waste your bandwidth- the webmaster of the site you're viewing does because they need the cash. Viewing the ads is part of the "price" you pay to view the site itself. The fact that you (and i) are able to easily opt out is merely a demonstration of how easy it is for us to "steal"- and probably means we'll see more draconian measures in the future by webmasters to ensure that they get the number of banner-views they think they need. |
| not viewing ads != stealing (Score:2) by xdc (dcerman@verinet.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:22PM EST (#386) (User Info) http://www.moby.org/ |
Viewing the ads is part of the "price" you pay to view the site itself. The fact that you (and i) are able to easily opt out is merely a demonstration of how easy it is for us to "steal"- and probably means we'll see more draconian measures in the future by webmasters to ensure that they get the number of banner-views they think they need. "Stealing" is a harsh way to put it. What about people who browse the web with auto-load images turned off? I see nothing wrong with processing downloaded code and data as the user or administrator sees fit. People should in no way be obligated to endure ads or any other objectionable content. The Internet is a public network. By putting up websites and serving requested information to users, site owners are freely offering and releasing information. Users may then store, process, act upon, or discard that information as they see fit. The fact that many sites are sustained by revenue from ads should not deprive users of those basic, reasonable rights. In any case, I think that it is less ethical to covertly track and profile people than for people to set up their software to not request ads or accept cookies. People don't exist for the sole purpose of generating revenue. |
| Re:not viewing ads != stealing (Score:2) by plunge (cosym@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @05:39PM EST (#491) (User Info) http://cosym.net |
| I wasn't completely serious about "stealing" but you see my point- if we aren't actually seeing the ad content that companies pay webmasters to display, at some point they'll find out and try to work around it. The alternative may suck much more than what we have now. People aren't obligated to watch commercials on tv either, but companies will go to great lengths to see that their product gets the "views" it wants. This has included paying shows themselves to shill product. It is starting to really effect content of entertainment that relies upon ad dollars to fund itself. I don't know the solution here, but I do think just opting out (as both you and i obviously have a right to do) isn't going to be a stable situation. |
| advertisers will find a way (Score:1) by xdc (dcerman@verinet.com) on Thursday January 27, @11:47PM EST (#499) (User Info) http://www.moby.org/ |
| Yes, I agree that there is a very real possibility that advertisers will find a way of getting their messages to us even if we filter or opt out of banner ads. I stopped using GeoCities when their pop-ups became unbearable. If a lot more websites resort to doing things more insidious and annoying than banner ads, we'll probably yearn for the good old days of waiting for banners to load so we can see a page. As the web gets XMLified, I expect to see more nifty agent programs that can go out and distill content from the web. The thought has occurred to me, though, that sites may block these agents/bots in the same way that we can block their ads, just to try to force us to view their sites with approved programs that will show us ads. Two can play at this game. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:2) by Kris_J (Kris_Johnson@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @03:49AM EST (#476) (User Info) http://krisjohn.cjb.net |
| The "Opt-Out" option does not stop the ads from appearing on your screen, it stops the advertising company from tracking your details. The website still gets the revenue... If you want to actually block the ads (on a windows PC), I recommend Proxomitron. Otherwise, Junkbusters. (or adding the appropriate domain blocking to Squid, if used.) I'm the IT guy for a 50+ company. I use Proxomitron personally and I've blocked a number of advertising domains using the company proxy. I also have GIF animation turned off. All in all, I see few ads and even less advertising content. (You'd be surprised the effect just turning off GIF animation has....) [I hereby grant full permission for any and all to retransmit, archive, republish and broadcast all of my postings to Slashdot, past, present and future] |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:2) by plunge (cosym@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @05:34PM EST (#490) (User Info) http://cosym.net |
| but that's exactly what I'm talking about- if you aren't getting the full "ad view" the advert company wants, then at some point they'll find out and either not pay the website owner anymore, or find some other way to force you to see it. Ad companies aren't going to always be fooled by simple hits. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:2) by Kris_J (Kris_Johnson@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @06:42PM EST (#493) (User Info) http://krisjohn.cjb.net |
| Fine, but that's not "Opt-Out", not in the context of this article. Ad companies are welcome to try whatever tricks they want to expose me to ads, so long as it's legal and above board. Similarly, I use any tricks I can to avoid seeing them. It's a competition and ultimately the result is less important than how you play the game... (In fact, how you are perceived to have played the game is part of the game. DoubleClick took a major risk with the unannounced tracking of personal details, and may have lost this round) [I hereby grant full permission for any and all to retransmit, archive, republish and broadcast all of my postings to Slashdot, past, present and future] |
| Re:"getting nothing in return????" (Score:1) by acomj (acomjean2@aol.com) on Friday January 28, @09:53AM EST (#502) (User Info) http://members.aol.com/acomjean2 |
| How do you think web pages and those who create them pay for them..? I can't you believe all the pages you view were put on the web at a cost of nothing. Ads help pay for them in the same way they keep the prices of magazines and newspapers low. So in a way they are paying you to view them because you want to view the content (unlike unsolisited email). Yeah adds are annoying, but they're necessary. They'res also the question as "click through" rates fall as they are, whos is going to pay for serving all this content. As for thinking those add are immoral?? Its an advertisment. Do you stop wathcing TV because of ads (which actually waste your time..) On the otherside, doubleclick is a devious company trying to match real address to web cookiew. "Sit back and enjoy the chaos" -Unknown |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by Caspuh (caspuh@nospam.caspuh.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:34AM EST (#156) (User Info) http://www.caspuh.com |
| Your way would make it harder for sites that DO depend on ads for revenue Maybe if enough people start blocking doubleclick ads, these sites will switch to an advertising company that doesn't violate poeple's privacy? |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by the way on Wednesday January 26, @12:38AM EST (#69) (User Info) |
| I've started blocking web ads a while ago, replacing them by one-pixel blank gifs One problem with this is that it makes some sights' design look wrong, since it assumes the ad exists. You might consider replacing the ads with a blank gif the same size as the original. Also, consider offering two proxies, one which doesn't block ads, so that users can exercise choice. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by in8 on Wednesday January 26, @04:06AM EST (#228) (User Info) |
| Better yet - replace the ads with company custom ads! Say, Company Picnic June 11th!, Happy holidays from the CEO, The Firewall admin needs a raise....etc... Hmmmm - maybe we can make this into the next IPO? We could call it IntraClick! :-) |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by Malcontent (malcontent@msgto.com) on Wednesday January 26, @04:25AM EST (#234) (User Info) |
| Great Idea! Do unto others what has been done to you |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:2) by Kris_J (Kris_Johnson@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @03:53AM EST (#477) (User Info) http://krisjohn.cjb.net |
Better yet - replace the ads with company custom ads!That is too cool. Sounds like a good reason to try Junkbusters on one of our servers... Staff would probably much prefer "local advertising" than the totally useless US crap (I'm down under). [I hereby grant full permission for any and all to retransmit, archive, republish and broadcast all of my postings to Slashdot, past, present and future] |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:2) by QuMa (fvw+slashdot@var.cx) on Wednesday January 26, @09:31AM EST (#312) (User Info) http://www.var.cx |
| Just because the images are 1x1 doesn't mean you can't use the HEIGHT and WIDTH options. Though the custom ad idea posted is *way* cooler. |
| Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:4, Insightful) by Mister Attack (hodgepodge@dartmouth.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @12:57AM EST (#107) (User Info) http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~attack |
| It will place a cookie on your computer that'll let you opt out of doubleclick's tracking. The thing is, do we want to trust Doubleclick not to track us personally, even after we opt out? I think it's less than prudent to put that kind of faith in a company that's been decieving us since last year. A simpler (and more thorough) solution: block cookies from doubleclick.net. Hell, if you've got a firewall, block all packets to and from doubleclick.net. I, personally, can't see any reason to connect to a doubleclick server. Who wants the ads anyway? Same thing goes for preferences.com, flycast.com, and any other advertising company. I've been dropping all packets to and from the domains mentioned above, with no significant problems. Of course, I don't get to see those specially targeted banner ads, but I don't really think I'm missing out :) |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:2, Informative) by god_of_the_machine (ryan (at) thiessen (dot) com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:18AM EST (#125) (User Info) http://www.ryan.thiessen.com/ |
| They could still be tracking us. I just opted out and looked at my cookie files (Netscape 4.7 for Win98) and it didn't set the cookie to a string starting with "OPT_OUT". Here is my cookie strings in Netscape Before: www.doubleclick.com FALSE / FALSE 951372615 q4_popup 1 .doubleclick.net TRUE / FALSE 1920499068 id d7ee54a9 And after... www.doubleclick.com FALSE / FALSE 951372615 q4_popup 1 .doubleclick.net TRUE / FALSE 1920499068 id d7ee54a9 Check this out on other systems/platforms I know on my IE5.5 install, it does set it to "id~OPT_OUT~doubleclick.net/~0~1468938752~31583413~866453120~29321155~*" which doubleclick may still be able to track based on the complex numbers following the OPT_OUT. -- "Progress is the God of the Machine" |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:1) by Mr. Piccolo (justin.kolodziej@vms^H^H^Hmarquette.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @01:35AM EST (#158) (User Info) http://vmsb.csd.mu.edu/~4wg7kolodzie |
| No change here either, though I just had a .doubleclick.net cookie after I checked. Perhaps it only works on IE? PEACE OR ANNIHILATION, IT'S YOUR CHOICE To mail me, press BACKSPACE where you see ^H. |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:2) by Nodatadj (u07ih@NOSPAM.abdn.ac.uk) on Wednesday January 26, @08:11AM EST (#290) (User Info) http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~u07ih/spamfree/ |
| No change here.... So I just deleted the .doubleclick line, and all the other ad ones. |
| You have to quit Netscape (Score:1) by mattc (mattc-at-pobox-dot-com) on Wednesday January 26, @10:26AM EST (#336) (User Info) http://pobox.com/~mattc |
| The cookie file isn't updated until you quit Netscape. Quit Netscape and then look at the cookie file. |
| Re:You have to quit Netscape (Score:2) by Nodatadj (u07ih@NOSPAM.abdn.ac.uk) on Thursday January 27, @09:11AM EST (#485) (User Info) http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~u07ih/spamfree/ |
| I did. No change. So I deleted the cookies I didn't like and then made the file read-only. |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:2, Informative) by isaac_akira on Wednesday January 26, @01:32AM EST (#144) (User Info) |
| The thing is, do we want to trust Doubleclick not to track us personally, even after we opt out? I just opted-out, and checked my double-click cookie. It now contains simply "OPT_OUT", with no extra characters (IE 4.5, MacOS). I don't see how they could possibly track my individual site visits with that. I'm actually quite happy with doubleclick about this. I hope they keep their word, and don't send me a new unique id cookie at some point. - Isaac =) |
| Probably -- misrepresentation & fraud (Score:3, Insightful) by KMSelf (kmself@SPAMmeNOT.ix.netcom.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:16AM EST (#179) (User Info) http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/ |
If a company says it's going to do one thing, then does another, then they're open for a whole mess of legal problems -- misrepresentation, fraud, etc. A legal friend of mine is interested in pursuing this idea on the spam front -- include a header which says "this message is not spam", allowing people to filter on it. Including this header (a non-default, BTW) in mail which is spam then becomes legally actionable. Similar logic applies to Doubleclick. Do I give them the chance. No. Yes, the law can be your friend. What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? |
| "This is not spam" (Score:2, Insightful) by Robin Lionheart on Friday January 28, @05:50AM EST (#501) (User Info) http://mars.superlink.net/~robinl/ |
| > ...include a header which says "this message is not spam", allowing people to filter on it. I already filter on messages that say "This is NOT SPAM". They go straight to my spam folder. Haven't had a false positive yet. |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:1) by guran (Reply to this@bottom of post) on Wednesday January 26, @02:51AM EST (#193) (User Info) |
| Hell, if you've got a firewall, block all packets to and from doubleclick.net You did not run into problems with page rendering? I've seen a coupla webpages that did not display at all since a freaking ad server was down. (Yeah I know "If they can't make proper web pages, why should I bother to visit yada yada" Yes, some strange looking pages is a small price to pay to get rid of doubleclicks tracking, but I still wonder All opinions are my own - until criticized |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:2) by Mister Attack (hodgepodge@dartmouth.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @11:10AM EST (#354) (User Info) http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~attack |
| You did not run into problems with page rendering? Well, yes, on some extremely ad-heavy and poorly-designed sites that assumed the ads were there. Small price to pay... |
| Doubleclicked opted me back in again! (Score:1) by type2 on Wednesday January 26, @06:26AM EST (#271) (User Info) |
| I opted out of doubleclick a couple of months ago. Today I went back to their opt-out page to find that I'm opted back in. So I opted out again, but who knows for how long? I will have to take other measures. Of course, I can't provide independently verifiable proof that I did indeed opt out before, or that I was opted in as of this morning. But I know I did. This pisses me off no end. -type2 PS: No, my ip address hasn't changed, and anyway that shouldn't be a problem since they are using cookies, right? |
| Re:Doubleclicked opted me back in again! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:08PM EST (#396) |
| Were you using Netscape? I use NS 4.7, and I notice that Netscape loses my entire cookie file at least once a month. This is a huge pain in the ass (anyone know why this happens?). In any case, if Double click is setting a cookie that identifies you as someone who has opted out, obviously that cookie will be lost if your entire coookie file gets cleared. |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:1) by Ateran (ateran6@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @09:38AM EST (#318) (User Info) http://www.ateran.com |
| If you don't/won't set up a firewall, I suggest junkbuster. Blocks every ad I've come across, and allows cookie filtering. -Ateran |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:2) by Fastolfe (david@fastolfe.net) on Wednesday January 26, @10:41AM EST (#341) (User Info) http://fastolfe.net/ |
| I really don't have a problem with the *ads* themselves. Advertisements are what pays for sites like Slashdot. Blocking them out decreases revenue for Slashdot, so I'm quite happy to leave them in place, so long as they're benign (which seems to not be the case with DoubleClick). Hell, I occasionally (like once every few months) even click on one. |
| Re:Should we trust Doubleclick not to track us? (Score:1) by Ateran (ateran6@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @06:44PM EST (#448) (User Info) http://www.ateran.com |
| Neither do I. I do, in fact feel a little guilty about using junkbuster, because, as you say, they pay for a lot of sites. In fact, every so often I turn it off out of the "kindness of my heart =P". The problem is, and the reason I always turn it back on, that far too many ad servers are really slow, and when you use netscape, they makes you have to wait that much longer just to view the page. I've come across ad servers that take up to a minute just to contact. End result: I turn junkbuster back on, and I *do* find that it speeds up my web access. -Ateran |
| Cookie Filtering (Score:1) by kcarnold (kcarnold@yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:42PM EST (#415) (User Info) http://geocities.com/kcarnold/ |
I set up a firewall (simple ipchains ... -d ad.doubleclick.net -j DENY) and it was a tremendous pain, especially with IE. In my experience, if IE5 has trouble loading an ad, it will cover the entire page with a location unavailable or something like that error. (I have seen IE only cover the image with the same, but that depends on some things that I don't want to spend my time investigating.) My bigger problem, though, was the problem of a heck of a lot of ad servers under doubleclick.net. I block one, the next day they have a different one and I block that, etc. It gets tiring, and I am still not guaranteed that somehow it isn't sneaking a cookie by (like a 1x1 image the same color as the background or something). I want the ability to block cookies from specific sites. This should be implemented in the browser, and is already sort of implemented in IE through the use of "zones". However, I have found this not to be flexible enough. I want to be able to specifically block cookies from specific sites, or even better, block cookies transmitted along with non-html (i.e. banner ads) content. Since we have the code for Mozilla, why not do it there? A simple list in the user preferences file would be enough to accomplish the desired result. Block cookies that come from *.doubleclick.net. Block all cookies that are attached to things not of type text/html. Or act like IE: only allow cookies from Slashdot, etc. Go ahead and tell me it's already been done and make me feel stupid... or make me happy by saying that you're working on it. If no one else wants to work on it, I'll try it. Can't be that hard. Kenneth (who wishes to remain "anonymous" but is definately not). PS - I don't like out-of-browser filters because (a) they are usually not cross-platform, while good browsers are, and (b) many rely on proxies, which I don't like, not to mention (c) they take up speed and resources on my computer that I don't really want to give away if I can help it. Some users have funny sigs. Not me. |
| Re:Cookie Filtering (Score:1) by Mister Attack (hodgepodge@dartmouth.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @06:42PM EST (#447) (User Info) http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~attack |
| Actually, IE4.5 (Mac version) allows cookies to be blocked by site. That would be my method if I didn't already have a firewall in place. And I've had very few rendering problems, BTW. -- Wow. I have LiViD and css-auth here. |
| Re:Cookie Filtering (Score:1) by kcarnold (kcarnold@yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @07:49PM EST (#452) (User Info) http://geocities.com/kcarnold/ |
IE5/Win lets you do zones, which work all right but it lumps all sorts of other security stuff with it, like Java and ActiveX security. Just because I want cookies to be accepted by all of some subset of sites doesn't mean that for each site I want it to treat my security the same way. Some users have funny sigs. Not me. |
| Re:Cookie Filtering (Score:1) by bobv-pillars-net (bobv-slashdot@pillars.net) on Friday January 28, @04:10PM EST (#507) (User Info) http://www.pillars.net/ |
Change it from -j DENY to -j REJECT, and you won't get the delays. REJECT sends an "unreachable" response immediately, whereas DENY just drops the packet, leaving your browser to time-out the connection. |
| Re:Cookie Filtering (Score:1) by kcarnold (kcarnold@yahoo.com) on Friday January 28, @06:54PM EST (#509) (User Info) http://geocities.com/kcarnold/ |
Thanks; the docs I had weren't very clear on this. Some users have funny sigs. Not me. |
| Re:Opt-Out (yeah... right..) (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:23AM EST (#131) |
Does anyone actually trust them on their 'Opt-Out' option? A while ago they said they weren't tracking users. They lied. Now we should trust them on this? It's equally likely that hitting the 'Opt-Out' link will just get you tagged to receive all sorts of specifically targeted direct marketing 'protect your privacy' junk mail. The real solution requires actually recognizing that our privacy rights apply to databases too. Unfortunately, that might adversely affect the corporations. And whatever the corporations want, they get. After all, that's what they spend all that campaign donation money for. This is why corporations can have secrets "protected" from individuals by the gun wielding state-run police, but individuals have no such right to have their own secrets protected from the corporations (or their databases). If this doesn't make you furious, you aren't paying attention. What we really need is a way to completely "opt-out" of the Abacus Database (and any other database we don't want to be on). And there will need to be some realistic means of enforcement. But so long as we keep electing politicians without principles who will suck up to anything for enough campaign money, nothing short of bloody revolution is going to prevent this trend. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:34AM EST (#154) |
This is the opt-out link. It will place a cookie on your computer that'll let you opt out of doubleclick's tracking. #host ad.doubleclick.net Not that I would ever advocate anything illegal, of course. |
| Couldn't the database be poisoned? (Score:2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:34AM EST (#155) |
| Can anyone think of any good scheme to mess up their system? I mean, they're relying on the Internet's participation for populating their database, for linking users to cookies, right? So would there be some cool way for us Internet type folks to poison the database with fake entries, bogus cookies? Make it so they couldnt' tell real visitors hitting legitimate banners from say, an orchestrated champaign of spoofed visitors, visitors who want their privacy kept private? Can this be done? Would this be legal? |
| Re:Couldn't the database be poisoned? (Score:1) by Malcontent (malcontent@msgto.com) on Wednesday January 26, @04:25AM EST (#236) (User Info) |
| Should be easy to do with junkbusters it's the "orchestrated champaign" that's hard. Do unto others what has been done to you |
| Re:Couldn't the database be poisoned? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:45AM EST (#244) |
Can anyone think of any good scheme to mess up their system? I can think of one particularly nasty way. It's an evil prank you could play by abusing the doubleclick database with bogus data. It also demonstrates the inherent evil^H^H^H^H problem with user tracking databases like this one. Say there's someone at your work you don't like. Say they are happily married. Say they have a deeply religious family. Say you break into their computer. Is there anything preventing you from copying their doubleclick cookie onto your own machine, spoofing their IP address, and then happily clicking away on all the hard core porn sites in the world (or just create a program to do it for you)? I don't think there's any technical reason why this would be impossible. Wouldn't doubleclick's 'targeted marketing' then cause this person to receive all sorts of customized pornographic advertisement on their browser and in their mail? Abacus' database holds their snail-mail address after all; that's what this is all about. I wonder what would happen to the co-worker's happy marriage when their spouse starts seeing all this porn junk mail showing up in the mail box addressed to your co-worker? What happens if you make it look like they've been visiting child pornography sites and the government finds out? I'm not saying anyone should attempt the hypothetical prank just described. I really hope nobody does it to me for posting this (I hope Anonymous Coward really is anonymous). I'm just saying I think it would be possible to do, and it demonstrates the sort of damage that can be done to real peoples lives just because user tracking and databases like doubleclick's exist. Just because doubleclick owns the database doesn't mean they're the only ones who can abuse it. The mere fact of the existence of the database makes this sort of abuse possible. Can this be done? Probably. The trick is not getting caught so they can't just block your bogus data. Or try to punish you for that matter. Would this be legal? I have no idea. Probably not. It's not very nice. It might be worth doing to a few of our elected representatives, directors of the MPAA, or the doubleclick people themselves. |
| Re:Couldn't the database be poisoned? (Score:1) by B1 (debrcmj@earthlink.net) on Wednesday January 26, @09:46AM EST (#322) (User Info) |
Say there's someone at your work you don't like. Say they are happily married. Say they have a deeply religious family...[snip]...Wouldn't doubleclick's 'targeted marketing' then cause this person to receive all sorts of customized pornographic advertisement on their browser and in their mail?Good thinking! Just be careful that it doesn't backfire somehow...I can see it now... "Martha, this is the tenth pornographic banner ad I've seen tonight. The internet has way too much pornography on it. We must ban it, or make censorware mandatory...just think of the children!" |
| Re:Couldn't the database be poisoned? (Score:2) by orabidoo (see@my.webpage) on Wednesday January 26, @11:34AM EST (#365) (User Info) http://www.iagora.com/~espel/index.html |
| well, getting their banners and tracking cookies, but removing the cookie every day or more often, is a way of poisoning the db with lots of useless entries; however, these entries will eventually expire (no more hits in a long time => cookie must be lost; not associated to a real name profile => useless, expire it). a stronger way to poison the db would be to have a proxy that randomizes the content of the doubleclick cookie, within its usual syntax. depending on how their system is setup, you could either get ignored in most cases, or manage to assign your hits to other random people's profiles. but you'd need a lot of people doing that to have a significant impact, and most people just don't care enough. hell, *I* don't care enough either; I'm just happy to block them at /etc/hosts. |
| I own my cookies (Score:1) by dgonz on Wednesday January 26, @04:24PM EST (#433) (User Info) |
| How can it be illegal to manipulate cookies on your own machine? I can set up anything I'd like on my computer and if they want to read it and shove it in a db, fine. Good luck trying to get anything useful from it though. |
| Bocking DoubleClick at the firewall ... (Score:2) by Nicolas MONNET (nico@nospam.monnet.to) on Wednesday January 26, @03:56AM EST (#223) (User Info) http://monnet.to |
| It's amazing how many people do it! A friend of mine, who works as a consultant, does that on EVERY customer's firewall he puts his hands on. Also, I've noticed that KDE's file browser blocks pics from DoubleClick. |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by paRcat (Phillip(at)Ryals.com) on Wednesday January 26, @09:31AM EST (#314) (User Info) http://phillip.ryals.com |
| I decided to do the opt-out thing, and was curious about the cookie that they would send to remedy the situation. I looked at my cookies, only to find 2 from doubleclick.net. One certainly had the opt-out code, but the other was still the same. Not to mention it was the one that would be read if I ever went back. Yet another firewall that blocks their packets... - A man in a coon skin hat with a pig pen wants eleven dollar bills... and you only got ten. - |
| Opt-Out? A quicker and better solution. (Score:1) by Thorgal (thorgal@amiga.com.pl) on Wednesday January 26, @10:42AM EST (#342) (User Info) http://wfmh.org.pl/~thorgal/ |
| echo "127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net" >> /etc/hosts |
| Web logs still leak info; opt out *completely* (Score:2) by Tau Zero (spherethis@youknownottoincludethis.yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @11:21AM EST (#360) (User Info) |
| I have adopted a policy: if an ad site tries to serve me with a cookie, I block that ad site entirely. I never see ads from flycast.com, for example. I'm doing this by hand, mostly for fun, but also as a bit of consciousness-raising on my own part. I'm doing this under IE4.0 at work. The HOSTS file is useless since all HTTP traffic goes through a proxy, but going into the advanced-proxy configuration allows one to specify sites which should not be accessed through the proxy. Routing these to the local network gets them blocked at the firewall, and they time out. This is better than blocking cookies, because the ad site never gets to see an IP address, let alone the http:referrer field. Something to be aware of: Even if you use the write-protected cookie file trick under Netscape, if you accept a cookie it will still be active until the end of your session. This means you will be letting Doubleclick/Abacus connect your hits to your name and home address, at least for the rest of your surfing that day. Blocking all access to Doubleclick costs them a lot more. Slashdot serves a lot of its own ads, which I still see (of course). I will happily patronize Slashdot, because I doubt it is going to sell my private information to anyone or track me between sites. Doubleclick, flycast, bfast, hitbox and the rest are not so friendly, and I think that sites which use their services should not be given the benefit of the doubt (or the revenue). Here's my current blocklist (pardon the formatting): |
| Offtopic: domain sorter script (Score:2) by Speare (e d @ e x p l o r a t i . c o m) on Thursday January 27, @11:58PM EST (#500) (User Info) http://www.explorati.com/people/ed/ |
| #!/local/bin/perl5 # # usage: domain.sort.pl < listofdomainnames > sortedlistofdomainnames # # Sorts by each domain, so all *.com's are sorted together, and # all *.abc.com's are sorted together near the top of all *.coms, etc. # Doesn't sort dotted IP4 addresses well, but doesn't mangle them either. sub reversehost { my @terms = split(/\./, shift); @terms = reverse @terms; join('.', @terms); } sub main { my @lines = <>; foreach my $line (@lines) { chomp $line; $line = reversehost($line); } @lines = sort { $a cmp $b } @lines; foreach my $line (@lines) { print reversehost($line) . "\n"; } } main(); 1; Ed Halley [ e d @ e x p l o r a t i . c o m ] |
| Re:Opt-Out (Score:1) by mitheral on Wednesday January 26, @11:54AM EST (#371) (User Info) |
| Hmm, The opt out page is /.'ed to hell and back. Wonder why that is. Maybe people actually do care about this. |
| doubleclick (Score:3, Insightful) by vectro on Wednesday January 26, @12:21AM EST (#25) (User Info) |
| You can use a junkbuster proxy to filter out ads. Alternatively, I believe that internet explorer allows you to set the 'doubleclick' domain to be in its own security zone, and then set that zone to not accept cookies. Note also that you will only be associated w/ the database if they have some way to associate you w/ your entry in their database. Once your cookie is there, though, they will know. |
| Re:doubleclick (Score:1) by the way on Wednesday January 26, @12:40AM EST (#70) (User Info) |
| I believe that internet explorer allows you to set the 'doubleclick' domain to be in its own security zone, and then set that zone to not accept cookies That's not necessary. Just click here, which places a special cookie on your computer telling Doubleclick not to give you a personalised cookie. |
| Re:doubleclick (Score:2) by Bob Ince (andrew@oaktree.co.uk.spam) on Wednesday January 26, @04:43AM EST (#242) (User Info) |
I believe that internet explorer allows you to set the 'doubleclick' domain to be in its own security zone, and then set that zone to not accept cookies. True, though it is probably wiser to reject all cookies by default and only enable them on sites that you know you need them for. After all, doubleclick might for some reason use a different server name at some point, or an IP address. And doubleclick is not the only potential nasty out there. This problem is so very easily solved. Add "only accept cookies originating from the server that you see in the URL" (ie. that owns the HTML document or top frameset) to browsers like IE that don't have it, and make it the default option for all browsers. Legitimate sites disabled approx. zero. Doubleclick dead in the water. Wonder how much money Microsoft could extort from doubleclick by threatening to do this? :-) Go MS! -- This comment was brought to you by And Clover. (Sorry.) |
| Block ads and cookies (and tracking) (Score:1, Informative) by zlexiss on Wednesday January 26, @12:21AM EST (#28) (User Info) |
| Use internet junkbuster.. makes everything better, and now helps protect privacy too :-) http://www.junkbuster.com Good example of quality GPL'd software, even has win32 versions. I've been using it for a while even with a cable link to speed up web page loading and get rid of the ads.. |
| How to avoid the scam (Score:1) by Rasha on Wednesday January 26, @12:23AM EST (#31) (User Info) |
| If you are running Linux you can compile your kernel with ipchains. This is essentially a firewall package that among other things can filter packets. That is it can block packets coming from or going to a specific url or ip address read the HOWTOS on ipchainsand if needed the kernel HOWTO. Does anyone know all the ip addresses that Double Click uses so that I can set up my firewall to block them? |
| Database access (Score:1) by BOredAtWork (dsracic at vt.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @12:23AM EST (#32) (User Info) http://www.vt.edu:10021/D/dsracic |
| So, how can I see what information is available about me in this database? Or can't I? -- |
| prOn habit (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:23AM EST (#33) |
| Guess that would be a good reason to stop surfing for prOn huh? |
| You have mail! (Score:4, Funny) by seandunn (sdunn@SPAM-IS-BAD-M'KAYcalpoly.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @12:24AM EST (#35) (User Info) |
| What really worries me about this profiling is that sites might get information back from DoubleClick. I can just see it, my Grandmother types in www.whitehouse.com, and since she accidentally checked a box off on Yahoo stating "Please send me spam from anyone who gave us money" she is automatically signed up for the Big Bone of the Day. Well, I'm sure that going a little far, she probably will only be getting free samples of KY jelly in the mail and a free issue of Jonny Leatherpants and his Magic Nipple Clamps. But in all seriousness, I thought the FTC was tring to cut down or make on this kind of thing illegal, *and* with the whole Pentium 3 serial code fiasco, it is painfully clear that people value their privacy on the web. Anyone know of a site or utility to clear out certain cookies like these, but leave the nice ones in like Slashdot? |
| Re:You have mail! (Score:3, Informative) by Bitscape (bitscape@linuxstart.fuckspammers.com) on Wednesday January 26, @04:18AM EST (#231) (User Info) http://bitscape.festing.org/ |
Anyone know of a site or utility to clear out certain cookies like these, but leave the nice ones in like Slashdot? I wrote a perl script that does it. You just make a .cookies.allow text file in your home directory, have the script run as a cron job, whenever you start/stop Netscape, or any other time you feel like it. It wipes out all cookies except those from sites specified in the .cookies.allow file. Hope that helps! If train you in the ways of the Source I do, a vi Master you will be |
| Junkbuster! (Score:2) by sbeitzel on Wednesday January 26, @04:55AM EST (#251) (User Info) http://www.pobox.com/~sbeitzel |
You may want to take a look at setting up a Junkbuster proxy server on your web browsing machine. There are proxies for *nix and Win32. I've set 'em up on my FreeBSD box, my NT box, and my Win98 box, then configured my web browsers to use the appropriate proxy. It's sweet! |
| Re:Junkbuster! (Score:1) by muleboy on Wednesday January 26, @05:51AM EST (#265) (User Info) |
| Junkbuster allows you to set up a list of "allowed" cookies sites whose cookies can get through. I wish it had an option to pass through when it blocks a link I want, instead of having to edit the configuration or disabling proxy in the browser to see the link. |
| Re:Junkbuster! (Score:1) by Rob_u (robertm@rojoma.com) on Wednesday January 26, @08:26AM EST (#294) (User Info) |
| Hm... a special passthrough link on the "blocked site" page. Doesn't sound too hard to code up. I think I'll write that, in fact. |
| Re:You have mail! (Score:1) by DeadSea (1010SD@LegOstermillerArm.com (Amputate to email)) on Wednesday January 26, @08:25AM EST (#293) (User Info) http://www.ostermiller.com/ |
| I recomend Cookie Pal for windows. It intercepts the cookie alert window and then accepts or rejects the cookie for you based on filters. I don't know what is available for linux. You can get the program at Tucows. They also have several other cookie management tools available. Don't you wish you could play all classic arcade games like Ladder? |
| Re:You have mail! (Score:1) by SJS on Wednesday January 26, @02:39PM EST (#414) (User Info) |
1. Get rid of your cookies file. 2. Hit those sites that you want to allow cookies from, like Slashdot. (Alternatively, you can just edit the cookies file...) 3. chmod a-w .netscape/cookies (Or whatever your cookie file is.) If you want to add cookies, briefly chmod the cookies file to be writable, hit the site, set the cookies, and then chmod the cookies file again. |
| This Might Sway Some (Score:1, Funny) by Mignon (satan@programmer.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:24AM EST (#37) (User Info) |
| I have it on good authority that DoubleClick uses Linux. Seriously - no trollin'. They may be evil, but they're not all bad... I/O, I/O, it's off to sleep() I go. |
| Re:This Might Sway Some (Score:1) by DrEldarion (unit_02@secondimpact.stopthespam!.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:45AM EST (#84) (User Info) |
| What's with this... Just because they use Linux doesn't mean jack shit. That's saying something like "Well, Hitler once saved a kitten from the cold.. see? he's not all bad!" -- Dr E. -- It's not what it is, it's something else. |
| Re:This Might Sway Some (Score:2) by Issue9mm (issue9mmAThotmailDOTnospamDOTcom) on Wednesday January 26, @01:32AM EST (#143) (User Info) http://issue9mm.freeservers.com/ |
| Alright alright... This is gonna make me look bad, so before I start, I don't necessarily agree with everything that I say, think, or do. People do things for stupid reasons all the time, and while I haven't identified the stupid reason at stake here, I'm sure I will. On with the ignorance: Y'know, if Hitler saved a kitten from the cold, then, in fact, he WOULDN'T be ALL bad. That's exactly right. In fact, Hitler wasn't ALL bad. There were many GOOD things that he did, that simply happen to be overshadowed by all the VERY BAD things that he did. There is no single person without ANY redeeming qualities, and there are no people that act purely out of [evil|anger|rage|etc]. Nobody (at least that I know of (yes, I know of Manson, et al.) is ALL bad. Everyone has some redeeming quality, no matter how slight. Even Uncle Billy. Thank you for this time to make a fool of myself. |
| Re:This Might Sway Some (Score:1) by Mignon (satan@programmer.net) on Wednesday January 26, @10:21AM EST (#332) (User Info) |
| Just because they use Linux doesn't mean jack shit. That's definitely debatable, though someone else already has. My secondary point (aside from tossing out a Linux tidbit) was that lots of us get caught up in our Linux zealotry to the point where we would consider something like this to be a mitigating factor. For a reverse of this example, consider Slashdot. Most of us think they're a pretty cool site, but some have pointed out that in spite of promoting open source, they are not terribly forthcoming with their source. (Yes, I know they just released v.9 - damn irony!) Here's my sociological hypothesis about the quote above (are you listening, Jon Katz?): We've gotten so tightly enmeshed with our digital, binary, logical world, that we can't see that qualities like good and bad are on a continuum. I/O, I/O, it's off to sleep() I go. |
| Re:This Might Sway Some (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:34AM EST (#240) |
| I have it on good authority that DoubleClick uses Linux. Seriously - no trollin'. They may be evil, but they're not all bad... I don't know who your athority is, but mine seemed to tell a different story... ;-) # nmap -O doubleclick.net Starting nmap V. 2.3BETA6 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/) Interesting ports on (208.211.225.89): Port State Protocol Service 25 filtered tcp smtp 80 open tcp http 111 open tcp sunrpc 135 open tcp loc-srv 443 open tcp https 465 open tcp smtps 1030 open tcp iad1 1433 open tcp ms-sql-s TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=trivial time dependency Difficulty=14 (Easy) Remote operating system guess: Windows NT4 / Win95 / Win98 Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 43 seconds At least for their web server they don't use linux, and isn't their web server where they send their cookies from? |
| Re:This Might Sway Some (Score:1) by Mignon (satan@programmer.net) on Wednesday January 26, @09:34AM EST (#315) (User Info) |
| They have way more than one machine. I/O, I/O, it's off to sleep() I go. |
| Big Brother (Score:2) by dogbyte12 on Wednesday January 26, @12:25AM EST (#38) (User Info) |
| I can see a presidential election, 20 years from now, where these ad companies, sell to candidates, the url's their opponents went to when they were in college. But in a way, big brother will be a playing field leveler. If 20 years from now, somebody was running for President, and the only web sites they looked at were /., weather.com, and yahoo, I might be a little weirded out by them. It will ruin the idea of anonymous dialogues, which help in fostering honesty, but also bring along flame wars, but perhaps big brother will be a beacon of freedom in a perverse way. If we all act normally, i.e., not holier than thou, the notion of being watched will be like being ourselves in front of our families. I suggest we all order beer on line, go to playboy.com,(or playgirl for that matter for those so inclined;) order sex toys, join an online cult, and engage in flame wars on a star trek newsgroup by posting doctored naked pictures of our love affair with Spock. Hell, if Bill Clinton has shown us anything, it's that we have at least grown up enough to allow a human being to be president. The internet can allow us to grow as a society. If we act like ourselves, the truth will be less shocking. Isn't that a good thing?
George W. Bush-- Not a crackhead since 1974! |
| Did you read 1984? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:50AM EST (#96) |
| Remember the ending? If not then go read the book and think long and hard about the ending. You should never love Big Brother. |
| DoubleClick's Opt-Out program (Score:1) by LonEagle on Wednesday January 26, @12:25AM EST (#39) (User Info) |
| I was considering pasting parts of DoubleClick's "privacy" policy and critiquing them, but it's much easier just to opt out of their little cookie system. They replace their userid string in your cookie with a string: OPT_OUT. If enough people do this, their little database scheme will be worthless... muahahah! |
| Re:DoubleClick's Opt-Out program (Score:1) by Gregg M (greggm@wordnet.att.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:44AM EST (#82) (User Info) |
| Junkbuster allows you to edit the cookies you send back to certain domains. I like to put the "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE". You can put a well worded letter about what they can do with there database. |
| well, there's always ipchains (Score:1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:25AM EST (#40) |
I don't want any local process (ie. Netscape, lynx etc.) to connect to doubleclick.net: http://www.rustcorp.com/linux/ipchains/HOWTO-4.html#ss4.2 |
| I'm still a little confused... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:25AM EST (#41) |
I can see how the bastards are tracking your surfing trail. I can't see how they're getting your name and address though. Anyone know how they are getting that info? If it weren't for the DMCA, someone out there could reverse engineer their system and create a way to send it bogus data. More proof the DMCA isn't just unconstitutional; it's just plain evil. |
| I don't think this is always possible (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:25AM EST (#43) |
| How do they determine the user ? Most large ISPs (like AOL, etc.) go thru proxy gateways and the user has no unique IP address. Since cookies by themselves don't convey much about the user, how is it that they can get any info that could possibly tie the session to a user's personal information ? I'm a little sceptical about this. Please explain how its done if you actually know. |
| Re:I don't think this is always possible (Score:2, Informative) by billybob jr (bodell.no.spam@ihatespam.purdue.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @12:48AM EST (#89) (User Info) |
| When you accept a cookie from a site it is analogous to someone coming up to you and writing on your forehead 19876523. Does 19876523 mean anything in itself? No. But now lets say that the you go to the store and they see 19876523 on your forehead and write it down. Now you go to another store, and they write it down. These stores also write down everything you buy. Now let's say you go to another store and order something they are going to ship to you. They write down 19876523 as well as what you bought as well as your home address and name. Now a company knows what you ate at tacobell, bought at the supermarket, and what you bought at wal mart. Cookies in theory are limited in scope moreso than my example was, because only the company that wrote on your forehead could read the number. Only slashdot can read the cookies it sends to your browser. But, what ends up happening is that web pages use a 3rd party to serve up the banner ads. This 3rd party is the one that sends you the cookie. When you go to another site that this 3rd party is also serving up ads to, they instantly identify you from the old web site. If one of the websites you go to gets your shipping information and they have an agreement with the banner ad company, it's all over. |
| Re:Forehead (Score:1) by aegypt on Wednesday January 26, @04:25AM EST (#235) (User Info) |
| Something for the apocalyptically minded out there. Replace "mark" with "cookie" and "forehead" with "harddrive": Revelation 13:16: "He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name." |
| Look at it another way (Score:1) by blazer1024 (blazer@i.hate.spam.selectpath.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:26AM EST (#44) (User Info) |
| I mean, sure, it's not so great they can track everything we do, but also look at it this way. If they start calling my house trying to sell me something, they're basically wasting my time. Same if they start cluttering my mailbox(both e- and snail) I delete it/throw it away--I already do that. However, if they're doing something like trying to find out what sorts of things I am personally interested in, let them. Wouldn't you much rather receive adds that you might possibly be interested in, rather than aluminum siding adds when you live in a dorm, or coupons for an oil change when you ride a bike to work/school, or internet web server tools when you don't have or want your own web site? (Okay, now I sound like an IBM/Lotus commercial) I mean, seriously... ad companies specialize in one thing, ads. They don't want to blackmail you because you've been buying diamond jewlery online for your mistress, and buying your wife cheap wal-mart stuff. They want more effective advertising. Plus, by showing them what we like, then the businesses trying to make goods we'll buy will concentrate on what people want, rather than what everyone things people want. It's not really anything to be paranoid about. I'm sure half the companies in the world already have my name and address because I've bought something, but I don't care. Let them. Then they can see what I buy, and what I like. Who cares if Doubleclick has access to them now? It's all the better for us, if you ask me. |
| Re:Look at it another way (Score:1) by znu (znu@znu.dhs.org) on Wednesday January 26, @12:46AM EST (#85) (User Info) http://znu.dhs.org/ |
| They'd need to make strict laws regulating what information can be collected, who can see it, what it can be used for, and how long it can be kept. Until that's done, there's just no way I'll be comfortable with information about me being collected, even though I know there's only a very small chance an actual human will ever see it. -- The revolution will not be televised. You'll have to watch the webcast |
| Privacy invasion period. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:49AM EST (#92) |
| If I need something, they'll hear from me. Otherwise fuck off. If I ever came into personal contact with these people who would trample my rights and the constitution to make a buck off me I would permanently remove their genetic material from the gene pool. |
| Discoverable records (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:06AM EST (#114) |
There are three problems with your argument:
|
| Re:Look at it another way (Score:1) by Helge Hafting on Wednesday January 26, @06:12AM EST (#269) (User Info) |
| I mean, seriously... ad companies specialize in one thing, ads. They don't want to blackmail you because you've been buying diamond jewlery online for your mistress, and buying your wife cheap wal-mart stuff. They don't want to. Some private investigator might. He breaks in or gets a short-lasting job at the ad company. Then he collects info on thousands of people to find good blackmail candidates. Or maybe he finds the proof your wife hired him to find. Or he calls up the ad company claiming to be a online jewellry seller and could he please buy the dataset for people who have bought at least once? |
| Um (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:27AM EST (#46) |
| I have never used my real name anywhere on the internet, or have had it stored anywhere on my computer. Even in the case of software I have paid for, i enter the name 'Buck Futter'. Switch some of the letters around, I'm sure the DoubleClick motherfuckers would like that one. Eat my shit. |
| What doubleclick? (Score:3, Interesting) by slashdot-me (slashdot-me@HORMEL.altavista.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:27AM EST (#47) (User Info) http://www.ryans.dhs.org |
| [ryan@leia: serial]$ nslookup www.doubleclick.net Server: line.ryans.dhs.org Address: 199.201.131.225 *** line.ryans.dhs.org can't find www.doubleclick.net: Non-existent host/domain Golly, my dns server must be misconfigured :) Ryan sig: learn to spell. |
| Re:What doubleclick? (Score:1) by interiot on Wednesday January 26, @01:15PM EST (#399) (User Info) |
| Care to briefly share how you did that? Yours is a nice solution that I could share with my friends localy who don't have a linux box and don't want to install a proxy. -- |
| Re:What doubleclick? (Score:1) by slashdot-me (slashdot-me@HORMEL.altavista.net) on Thursday January 27, @11:19PM EST (#498) (User Info) http://www.ryans.dhs.org |
| If your friends don't have a unix box to run a dns server they're out of luck. I run a name server (BIND) for my domain ryans.dhs.org. The server is set so it thinks it's authoritative for the doubleclick domain too. Any name lookup on my network gets routed to my dns server for resolution. Since my server thinks it's authoritative for doubleclick it won't attempt to resolve the name and just returns error "no such domain." You might try setting the address for ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1 in you hosts file. I think windows stores it in c:\windows\drivers\etc\hosts Something like that. Ryan Salsbury sig: learn to spell. |
| How To Block DoubleClick's Tracking In Two Steps (Score:1) by @Man on Wednesday January 26, @12:28AM EST (#51) (User Info) http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman |
| 1. Put all DoubleClick's servers in your /etc/hosts file as 127.0.0.1 2. Put all of DoubleClick's servers in your "bypass proxy for" setting in your browser. This will kill both their ads and their cookies. I maintain a web page with a list of their servers and more detailed instructions for unix, windows, and BeOS (with experimental Mac instructions available tonight) using either Netscape or IE at http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/ ~atman/spam/adblock.html. It is easy and it works great. |
| Re:How To Block DoubleClick's Tracking In Two Step (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:49AM EST (#91) |
| Do you want to shut down all professional sites such as Slashdot.org or my site??? Many small timers depend on the advirtisements to justify spending vast amounts of time maintaining them. That's terrible.. I mean really.. do you have any morals?? Howabout ethics?? Any of those?? |
| It's my computer, not yours (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:43AM EST (#164) |
| I use junk buster which has worked better for me than the 127.0.0.1 thing which I've also tried. My monitor, my computer, my net, my electricity, and my time downloading your ads all belong to me. I will *never* intenionally click on *any* banner ads. By dumping ads on me you're wasting my time and *yours* as well. If you're selling impressions (downloaded but unclicked ads for those not in the web ad biz), then you really suck because now you're making money off my time and computer and *I* get _nothing_ for it. If you don't post the content, someone else will. The information wants to be free, not "ad supported". Find a business model that doesn't include killing my time or get off the net. |
| Re:It's my computer, not yours (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:58PM EST (#437) |
| Haha.. with your business model, there will be no sites left.. look you hypocrite.. all the good sites have banner ads.. slashdot, freshmeat, sourceforge ALL OF THEM do you not understand??? why go to these sites if you are just going to rip them off??? Get off slashdot, you don't need it.. don't worry.. according to you someone will make one just as good without banners. |
| Re:How To Block DoubleClick's Tracking In Two Step (Score:1) by sallen on Wednesday January 26, @02:45AM EST (#190) (User Info) |
| Opting out of doubleclick is fine here, and if that causes a problem for site that use doubleclick for services, then that's too bad. Ethics you say? Ethical behavoir wouldn't include going through my wastebasket without my premission to put together all my receipts and sell the data with my name and address. How is doubleclick any different. If a RESPONSIBLE advertiser wishes to send me banner ads and that keeps web sites operating and provides them an income, then I'm all for it. Interestingly, as people mention FTC complaints (which is good), one should also remember that doubleclick is now a public company, listed on the stock exchange with a LOT of stockholders that expect to make money. A little bad publicity about a lot of opt-outs, even if only temporarily, can cause a hefty hit to their share price with the way the market acts these days. They're after a buck, and their shareholders are certainly after an increase in revenues...and unlike celebrities, the market DOESN'T like bad publicity for a company, even if the press does spell their name correctly. |
| old news sorta ... and how to avoid it (Score:2) by MrP- (defsoft[NO@SPAM]gis.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:29AM EST (#52) (User Info) http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/ |
| I saw on tv a while ago about this, like if you went to a site and entered a contest or something, if you read their disclaimer, way at the bottom it would say it is owned by doubleclick, so once you submitted that form, they now had info to associate with your cookie... but you can go to doubleclick.net, the privacy section, they have an opt-out form so they wont track you, i did that the second i saw this on tv #---------------------------- $mrp=~s/mrp/elite god/g; #---------------------------- |
| Big Brother is watching you surf... (Score:1) by hypergeek (root@127.0.0.1) on Wednesday January 26, @12:30AM EST (#54) (User Info) |
| If I'm not mistaken, the Supreme Court recently ruled on a similar issue, saying that States' selling of DMV information to 3rd parties was an unconstitutional invasion of people's privacy. If that is the case, then these guys will come toppling down when the courts rule that they're infringing on people's rights... (At least, I hope that the courts will see the glaringly obvious similarities here!) If anybody has the specifics on the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling, please let me know... -Hypr Geeque Direct all flames to the above address... (especially if you're on a large campus/corporate network!) |
| Re:Big Brother is watching you surf... (Score:1) by billybob jr (bodell.no.spam@ihatespam.purdue.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @01:12AM EST (#121) (User Info) |
| The DMV selling information is a world of difference from some company doing it. We have to do business with the DMV. We have to give them our address. If you want to drive it is as simple as that. It is indeed wrong for the DMV to be able to sell off personal information for a few bucks, when the "customers" (everyone who wants to drive) have no say over the matter. It should not be illegal for a company to sell information about it's clients. You may not like it, I don't. Let's not do business with them. Let's find another company that is sensitive to our privacy needs. There is no need to get the government involved to force the "one true way" that we believe is right. What would be useful is legislation that would force disclosure of whether or not companies sold the information. We could make a little privacy ribbon .jpg that could be on sites that swore to not release privacy information. Maybe some sort of overseeing body that would revoke the "privacy friendly" status of a company if they acted stupid. My point is that we are not totally helpless here. We can solve the problem. No need to legislate. |
| Re:Big Brother is watching you surf... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:22AM EST (#130) |
We can solve the problem. No need to legislate. (To the tune of "Celebrate":) Le-gis-late good times; come on! |
| Re:Big Brother is watching you surf... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @01:39AM EST (#160) |
| lol |
| Edit your cookies (Score:1) by Wabbit on Wednesday January 26, @12:30AM EST (#57) (User Info) |
| I flush out all of the advertisers cookies on a regular basis. I'm assuming that this will cause them to build up zillions of one off database entries. I'm making some assumptions here about how they do their database. I keep thinking there must be a way to filter what gets exchanged when I go to a web site. I don't want to shut off cookies, too many user id's and passwords. Someone with a little more knowledge about how all of this works may want to comment |
| Re:Edit your cookies (Score:2) by Mister Attack (hodgepodge@dartmouth.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @01:17AM EST (#123) (User Info) http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~attack |
Depending on your OS, you have a couple of options(listed in order from my most favorite to least favorite):
-- Wow. I have LiViD and css-auth here. |
| Let's sue them!!! ;) (Score:1) by Munky_v2 (Munky Underscore v2 at yahoo dot com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:30AM EST (#58) (User Info) http://www.linuxlots.com/~dialug/ |
| This is such crap. I always thought that the whole "you are losing your freedom" stuff was BS, but now with the MPAA and doubleclick pulling this thing, I am going to have to start IP spoofing all the time. I say we need to activley fight this kind of invasion of privacy. IMHO boycotting will not work - stupid people greatly outnumber geeks, and stupid people, 1. don't care about this (because they are too stupid to understand) and 2. don't want to chage there habbits at all (again, because they are stupid and set in their ways). Any ideas on what we can do??? Munky_v2 "Warning: you are logged into reality as root..." Check out our LUG |
| This looks like a job.. for Junkbuster (Score:1) by urashima on Wednesday January 26, @12:31AM EST (#59) (User Info) |
| http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/ijb.html Configurable site, ad, cookie, and browser query blocking.. Now all I need is an up-to-date blocklist. :) |
| Re:This looks like a job.. for Junkbuster (Score:1) by Bent_MG (dmiller.ihatespam@elknet.net) on Wednesday January 26, @01:51AM EST (#169) (User Info) |
| For those of those looking for a good blockfile, here's what i've pieced together over the past few months: http://www.elknet.net/dmiller/blockfile.txt It weighs in at about 19KB, but i'm sure it'll save much more bandwidth than that in a matter of seconds! Enjoy! ;) "Trying is the first step towards failure!" - Homer Simpson |
| COOKIES ARE EVIL! (Score:1) by Gregg M (greggm@wordnet.att.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:32AM EST (#60) (User Info) |
| OK Rob, I don't want to say I told ya so, but... Cookies are they way people track you regardless of the morals behind it. When Mozilla happens we will have individual cookie control. Until then turn your cookies on and set your cookie file to read only. Then I'll need a button (on Mozilla) to set all security funtions for each web site I hit. |
| Oh. My. God. (Score:2) by cancrman (cancrman@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:35AM EST (#64) (User Info) |
| Wow. I mean sure, this was something that was sorta expected when I first heard about this (some old slashdot story). But after realizine the implications of this I just have to say...Wow. Welcome to a new era of junk mail people. Ultimately that is what this will result in. Okay it might be a little more severe than that, but what I really think will come of this is that a few more of us might be getting doubles of the edmund scientific cataloge. Okay, bad joke. This is serious. And I really wonder how the opt out link that they provide is used. Do you have to opt out for every IP address that you have? I opted out from my work IP but now I'm at home. Does that mean that evey thing I do from here they can track? What about people with dial-up connections? They don't have a static IP. Does this mean that they can't opt out at all? I'm kinda scared of the implications of this. For me I hope that it just means that I'll get more spam on my hotmail account. But still...... Pete The Internet's sole purpose is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children |
| Re:Oh. My. God. (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @12:56AM EST (#106) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| Do you have to opt out for every IP address that you have? No, but you need to opt out for every browser you use. I think the opt-out site explains it fairly well - it gets rid of the unique doubleclick cookie in your browser by replacing it with OPT_OUT, and then leaves it there. Hopefully, they won't find other ways to track you once you no longer have a unique cookie. -- |
| Re:Oh. My. God. (Score:1) by joe52 on Wednesday January 26, @01:29AM EST (#137) (User Info) http://EasternSkiing.com |
| it gets rid of the unique doubleclick cookie in your browser by replacing it with OPT_OUT, and then leaves it there. Hopefully, they won't find other ways to track you once you no longer have a unique cookie. You can also delete the cookie(s) yourself. When I first heard about this story I went through my cookies and deleted a lot of them (including all of them from doubleclick). I also configured my browser to reject cookies from a number of ad networks. I tried doubleclick's opt-out and I am happy to say that it didn't work because they couldn't place another cookie on my system, which seems a lot better that trusting them to keep the opt-out cookie in place. joe |
| Re:Oh. My. God. (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @01:33AM EST (#152) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| You can also delete the cookie(s) yourself. Well, simply deleting the cookie won't solve the problem because next time doubleclick sees your browser come without a cookie, it's going to assign it a new cookie. Blocking cookies from specific sites is an interesting strategy, however.. how do you do it? :) -- |
| netscape solution. (Score:1) by radar bunny on Wednesday January 26, @12:36AM EST (#66) (User Info) http://bounce.to/home |
| All the more reason to use netscape. In netscape, all your cookies are stored in a single text file. Simply open the file and delete everything with a reference to double-click or any other site whose cookie you dont want. Then save the file and change the permisions to read-only. The result is that no more cookes can be placed on your computer. Under Micro$oft I.E. the only option is to find the double click cookie (also a text file) and emtpy its contents and then do the same, but then they wll just give you a new one so its kinda hopeless. On a side note, I wonder how many John Does living at Nil street with a zip code of 12345 they have in their database? it's stange that the internet used to be a place of openess and free exchange of information. Now, these guys give us a reason to lie about everything. The REALY strange thing is that i dont think our privacy is being threatened as much by our government. but big business is sre trying to make it a thing of the past. "I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke |
| Re:netscape solution. (Score:1) by nylon66 (yer@mam.org) on Wednesday January 26, @12:46AM EST (#86) (User Info) |
| Yep -- I've done a different version of this on my Linux box: a Perl wrapper named 'safe-netscape' which runs through the cookies file and ditches all unwanted (i.e. non-Slashdot) lines. Writes the file, starts Navigator. /* The People's Republic of Chocolatey Delicious! */ |
| Time for a new Mozilla module. Any volunteers? (Score:3, Interesting) by Apuleius (ocschwar@nospam.mit.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @12:36AM EST (#67) (User Info) http://udamisha.tep.org |
| It should be a domain/IP-address based module to remember never to send requests to domains like doubleclick. It should make its way to the preferences section, preferably together with a cookie filter. By making it a standard part of Mozilla, it will pressure Netscape and M$ to copy the feature. This way the user has some control of how much info he gives away by browsing. Anonimizing proxies are also a solution, but it's best to make a .22 pea shooter available to those who don't want to pack a shotgun. Tune out. Turn off. Log in. |
| Re:Time for a new Mozilla module. Any volunteers? (Score:1) by jesser on Wednesday January 26, @01:04AM EST (#113) (User Info) http://www.palosverdes.com/jesse/ |
| Would it be legal for a company like Netscape to release a browser that blocks a specific company's website, even if it's just an option? I doubt they would block all the ad sites, because www.netscape.com uses a mixture of imgis and aol banner advertisements. Oh, wait, MS does things to break specific other products all the time, and they haven't gotten in any big trouble yet, so it must be ok. Never mind. Add to mozilla. Moderate down. -- |
| Re:Time for a new Mozilla module. Any volunteers? (Score:1) by QuantumET (quantumet@hotmail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:53AM EST (#195) (User Info) |
| The feature certainly wouldn't have to come with any preset addresses, or lists. Just a general feature of being able to block requests to certain addresses would be a very welcome addition, even if it is just a listbox in netscape. |
| Re:Time for a new Mozilla module. Any volunteers? (Score:2) by 1010011010 (1010011010@egcs-n-SPAM.holly-springs.nc.us) on Wednesday January 26, @08:58AM EST (#303) (User Info) |
| How about this, which is simpler: If I connect to a site, say, http://www.yahoo.com, and it references some content (graphics, whatever) not on a server in "yahoo.com", no cookies are sent. Don't like Echelon? Fight back! Agitate for a Transparent Society! |
| Fight Back!! Re:Time for a new Mozilla module. (Score:2) by BeBoxer (david-slashdot@themitchells.org) on Wednesday January 26, @09:52AM EST (#324) (User Info) |
| Actually, I've thought a little bit about this, and I think I 've got an idea that might be a little more fun. Of course, you should be able to specify the domains that you always accept cookies from, and the domains that you never accept cookies from. But, what could be an entertaining third option would be to send a fake cookie to the domain. I'm thinking of some simple configuration where you could set a fixed prefix, and have it add the right number of numbers and/or letters onto the end of it. Lot's of sites just use something simple like: "ID=nnnnnnnnnn". So, you just make up a random number each time you send them a cookie. End result? Their database starts filling up with random junk, and/or their error logs start growing with strange errors. If enough people were doing this, it could become a real headache for the cookie monsters. Another interesting possibility, which is more involved, is some sort of anonymous cookie exchange. When your browser got a new cookie, it could automatically upload it to the cookie exchange server. The server would then send you a whole list of other matching cookies to use randomly. This would prevent the cookie sites from using large cookies with CRC's or MAC's to detect spoofed cookies. Since they would all be real, legit cookies, they would all be accepted by the tracking site. End result? Lots of random records with little to no marketing value. I doubt that Netscape or IE would ever decide to pick up such a feature, but that's the great thing about Mozilla. They don't have to. --------------------- David Mitchell BeDevID: 7425 --------------------- |
| Great idea! (Score:2) by Brian Knotts (bknotts@europa.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:32PM EST (#412) (User Info) http://xfmail.slappy.org/ |
| Another interesting possibility, which is more involved, is some sort of anonymous cookie exchange. When your browser got a new cookie, it could automatically upload it to the cookie exchange server. The server would then send you a whole list of other matching cookies to use randomly. This would prevent the cookie sites from using large cookies with CRC's or MAC's to detect spoofed cookies. Since they would all be real, legit cookies, they would all be accepted by the tracking site. End result? Lots of random records with little to no marketing value. I really like this idea. This should definitely be added to Mozilla. The way to combat these sort of practices isn't just to block them, but to make them impractical/unprofitable. New XFMail home page |
| Protocol (Score:1) by kcarnold (kcarnold@yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @03:11PM EST (#421) (User Info) http://geocities.com/kcarnold/ |
Missed one important option: selective cookie acceptance. Almost all browsers allow this. Idea for the protocol for such an exchange:
Cookie sending would involve a similar exchange (since the mere presence of a cookie on a computer can be used for tracking without sending another cookie). If a cookie is sent more than once to a site that the user has specifically not said "allow" or "ask" to, it would also be exchanged. On the same subject, if the cookie was originally on the "ask" list when it was received, also ask before sending it back (option to exchange it also). The entire system must be structured to minimize the bandwidth necessary and the time delay in loading the page. This is why exchanging would be done on the receiving side always, and on the sending side sometimes; you can display the page without knowning whether or not to store a cookie, but you may need a cookie to load a page properly. The server would contain information by server as to whether or not scrambling the ID would work, and if it did work, the server would send back a scrambled cookie instead of a "recycled" cookie. The server would also keep track of how many times each cookie was sent so it could even out the averages. It would be necessary to keep users from accidently exchanging a cookie with a username/password in it. Maybe the browser could check whether a form submission included the text from an item whose input type was "password", then either "ask" or "allow" all cookies from that site by user preference. The worst-case scenario would be that the user was not tracked at all. The more likely case is that Internet cookie-based advertising dies. Be careful not to let up your guard if that happens, though. Suggestions for improvements? Ken, eating his cookies Some users have funny sigs. Not me. |
| Makes me very edgy. (Score:1) by Neuromancer (bacchus@spam.tampabay.rr.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:37AM EST (#68) (User Info) http://home.tampabay.rr.com/wntrmute/ |
| In a way it makes me queasy and a slight bit paranoid. In another way it annoys me that I've just become more spammable. This wouldn't be such a discomfort if we had more (or any) intelligent user agents to act as go betweens for us. Digital Liasons if you will. Sure, you can block this sort of abuse by using JunkBuster, or even IP chaining rulesets, but for the average user this can be too much work. Anyone have the 411 on browser add-ons that could automagically block this kind of thing? Are there even any such projects in the works? I'd have use of a "stealth" browser. :) .oO[ M$ Strategy: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy. ]Oo. |
| Yikes! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:40AM EST (#72) |
| I'm not usually one to jump up at privacy concerns - but I think this is pretty serious. Basically what it says, if you shop at a web store that uses DoubleClick's new tracking ads, then DoubleClick can associate the info that you typed in about yourself (name, real&email address, age, purchases, home/work/fax numbers, etc) And whenever you go to another site using DoubleClicks ads, they can read a cookie that was set and append to your profile that you visited the site. In other words, Marketting types would just LOVE this information. Shows all sorts of comparison shopping behavior and opens doors to all sorts of consumer analysis. What we need is a cookie filter to automatically reject DoubleClick cookies (without having to pop up a window for EACH cookie - thats gets rather annoying). I believe that should effectively foil this scheme. Maybe a plugin/patch like that already exists and I just need to find it. (But its sometimes just easier to write a quick perl script! ;) Tom |
| Arm Yourself Against Spam (Score:2, Informative) by x mani x (mani.ghasemlouATsympaticoDOTca) on Wednesday January 26, @12:41AM EST (#76) (User Info) http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~mghase |
| The software package that I prefer using is junkbuster. It is an easy to set up web proxy server that runs on port 8000 ... it is extremely effective at blocking out banner ads, and it also has options for blocking out suspicious cookies, and preventing $HTTP_USER-type variables from being initialized. It is unfortunate that we have to go to the trouble of installing these things, but the only cost of running it is the time it takes you to install the software. on the other hand, you'll be protecting your privacy as well as your bandwidth. "to forgive and forget, i live and regret" -CaveIn http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~mghase |
| Doubleclick/Real-Birds of a Feather... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:43AM EST (#79) |
| Here's what this benevolent company known as Doubleclick.net has to say about privacy: Information Collected in Ad Delivery In the course of delivering an ad to you, DoubleClick does not collect any personally-identifiable information about you, such as your name, address, phone number or email address. DoubleClick does, however, collect non-personally identifiable information about you, such as the server your computer is logged onto, your browser type (for example, Netscape or Internet Explorer), and whether you responded to the ad delivered. Now we find out that this is not only a bold-faced lie, but that they are proud and excited about this new opportunity to invade our lives. I for one am sick and tired of these incursions into my web-surfing habits. Sure, bills need to be paid so we can use web sites for free, I understand this. But there is a fine line between that and having some jack ass call me up at dinner time asking me if I'd like to enter in the Getaway 2000 Florida Vacation after his computer auto-dialed me from some massive database somewhere in the country. Why aren't the hackers going after these databases? Come on, do us proud boys! The marketing gurus have overstepped their bounds, and mark my words, it's just beginning. I wouldn't be surprised if some unsuspecting person clicks on a Gore2000 or Bush2000 banner ad and gets a phone call the next day asking for donations to the cause. Or how about you find a nice little banner ad for some church, like the Latter Day Saints, or any religious organization or group- the next week, two smart young missionaries show up at your door. This is ridiculous. |
| Someone's going to jail! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @12:50AM EST (#95) |
| Some advice for the DoubleClick suits: When you go to jail, kick someones ass the first day or become someones bitch. On a lighter note, these guys suck a really big, REALLY BIG COCK. This must be stopped, this must be illegal right now! or maybe a class action law suit... mmmm class action law suits *homer drool* |
| Opt out (Score:1) by rjamestaylor (rjtonlineAToneboxDOTcom) on Wednesday January 26, @12:51AM EST (#99) (User Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~thetaylorfamily |
| Please forgive me for not reading each post to see if this information is already given, but I'm tired tonight and my wife has had a sick baby all day (and it's my turn...see? I'm rambling). Here's the DoubleClick answer: Opt Out. Follow this link and get an untraceable cookie. At least, that's what they say... They assign you a cookie with the unique id "OPT_OUT" and they leave you alone. Of course, my conspiratorial side says that this will only draw their attention to you for closer surveillance.... :-only kona in my cup-: |
| Cookie crumbs (Score:4, Interesting) by scotch on Wednesday January 26, @12:53AM EST (#102) (User Info) |
| I use Netscape version 4.5-7-ish, and I have my settings configured to prompt me before accepting any cookies. This is probably not uncommon among slashdot readers; what is interesting is that when you do this, you really get an appreciation for how much cookies are abused or mis-used out on the web. Here are some of my humble observations on the matter:
Further, I think it would be useful to have a set of switches that are easily accessible on the toolbar that would allow you to toggle cookie policy on the fly. This would be much more useful than the latest Netscape feature, the "Shop" button. What a waste of real-estate. It would be nice to get something like that into Mozilla. I'll start tinkering with the Mozilla source just as soon as it takes less than two hours to download via cable modem ;) Ramble, ramble, ramble. |
| Shop button (Score:2) by Joe Rumsey (joe at rumsey dot org) on Wednesday January 26, @03:19AM EST (#201) (User Info) http://rumsey.dhs.org |
| This would be much more useful than the latest Netscape feature, the "Shop" button. What a waste of real-estate. Have you noticed that "Shop" and "Stop" are very similar in appearance, and placed right next to each other on the toolbar? I guess it's only because I turn the images on that bar off, but I think it's kind of funny that they're trying to trick me into clicking "Shop" by mistake when I meant to click "Stop". Do most people turn the images off, or do you like wasting all that space too? |
| Re:Shop button (Score:1) by scotch on Wednesday January 26, @03:52AM EST (#220) (User Info) |
| Yes, I've noticed that and am endlessly annoyed by the similarity (I use the text only buttons, saves space). I've hit that "shop" button many times on accident because of the similarity. You have to wonder if that added feature was meant to confuse. Another annoyance with the "shop" button is that it pushes the "stop" button further to the right which is off the edge of my browser at the width I like to run the thing at. Do any time-warner/aol/netscape employees know how to turn that damn shop button off with an X-default setting or something? |
| Re:Shop button (Score:4, Interesting) by Bradley (bbaetz at student.usyd.edu.au) on Wednesday January 26, @04:21AM EST (#232) (User Info) |
| From the release notes: You can disable the My Shopping button and Netscape Radio feature by editing the prefs.js file. user_pref("browser.chrome.disableMyShopping", true); user_pref("browser.chrome.disableNetscapeRadio", true); Its ~/.netscape/preferences.js on unix, but it works fine. |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Mozilla to the rescue?) (Score:1) by in8 on Wednesday January 26, @04:01AM EST (#225) (User Info) |
| Ah... Mozilla would be cool if we could set which sites we want to reject cookies from! Someone could setup a dble-click-cookie-of-day-RE-server, and the rest of us could then setup webservers to pass that same cookie to other users. This should significantly screw with doubleclick stats! %^) |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by Convergence (convergence@hypercube.res.cmu.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @04:24AM EST (#233) (User Info) |
| Better suggestion... (Given by Greyfox above), just write a cookie file with those cookies you want in it, then chmod it to be unwritable. True, it remembers cookies WITHIN the session, but not between sessions. (And given the existing bugginess of netscape, it'll probably disintegrate within an hour anyways). Great suggestion, and what I just did, my cookie file has exactly one entry in it: slashdot.org FALSE / FALSE 4137829385 user %1832.... Though I might put the NYtimes cypherpunk cookie in it later. It is less flexible than what you describe, but a lot simpler. Convergence |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:2) by !IH on Wednesday January 26, @04:53AM EST (#250) (User Info) http://www.stheno.demon.co.uk |
| Another thing I have noticed recently is an increasing number of browsers that ignore the rules on accepting invalid cookies. There are a number of criteria that a cookie must fulfil, and if it's invalid, it must be rejected. I'm mainly thinking about the domain setting. From RFC2109: To prevent possible security or privacy iolations, a user agent rejects a cookie (shall not store its information) if any of the following is true:
However, I've seen the last one uses more and more by sites, hotmail being one example. One of Hotmail's servers lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com sets a cookie for .passport.com, which is an invalid cookie, and by rights should be rejected. Of course, if your user agent is correct about cookies, then Hotmail will not work. This may not seem a problem if you usually browse sites with .com etc, but a lot of countries have a sub division for commerical under the country name - eg .co.uk. I don't want a site to be able to set a cookie that is valid for the entire uk commerical network, but currently there are no user agents (bar lynx which alerted me to the problem) that will reject invalid cookies like this. -- Exigo spamos et dona ferentes |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by pen (digdug@hotmail.com?subject=notspam:[subject]) on Wednesday January 26, @07:17AM EST (#280) (User Info) http://altern.org/digdug/ |
| I would be willing to wager that Opera will reject the cookies, since it adheres to all the specs in other areas, including HTML, CSS, and similar things about cookies. However, I have also had some sites not work because of this. But that doesn't matter, since I block all cookies anyway, except for the ones I need. If you don't do this already, you really should get JunkBuster. Available for Win32 and *nix. -- |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @08:35AM EST (#300) |
| From the netscape javascript guide (http://devedge.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/jsguide4/index.htm), appendix C Only hosts within the specified domain can set a cookie for a domain. In addition, domain names must use at least two or three periods. Any domain in the COM, EDU, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT categories requires only two periods; all other domains require at least three periods. |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by DeadSea (1010SD@LegOstermillerArm.com (Amputate to email)) on Wednesday January 26, @08:21AM EST (#292) (User Info) http://www.ostermiller.com/ |
| I would recomend getting a program that works with your browser to filter cookies. If you are a windows user, Cookie Pal is by far my favorite choice. You tell you web browser to tell you about cookies and cookie pal finds that window, intercepts it and handles it according to the filter options you set. I don't know what options are out there for linux but I will probably check them out now since I'm using linux more. Tucows has a nice list of cookie programs. I'd check it out if I were you. Don't you wish you could play all classic arcade games like Ladder? |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by knutsen on Wednesday January 26, @10:36AM EST (#340) (User Info) |
| Cookie Pal may be downloaded directly from the vendor, Kookaburra Software. |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by jamienk on Wednesday January 26, @09:20AM EST (#308) (User Info) |
| I find Netscapes's cookie-handling policy, while better than giving no choice at all, does not offer enough flexibility for my tastes. I would prefer to be able to accept/reject cookies based on a set of filters and rules for domains, transaction types, etc. Mozilla has pretty good cookie functions already including GUIs with: * The ability to accept/deny cookies based on URL * Similarly, the ability to remember when I reject a cookie from a site * The ability to view/delete individual cookies I believe that there are more powerful capabilities in the JavaScript Prefs file, but no GUI for these. |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by General Winter on Wednesday January 26, @10:36AM EST (#339) (User Info) |
| WWWOFFLE offers the functionality and control you desire, and much more. Try it out, it's worth the effort. http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/ |
| Re:Cookie crumbs (Score:1) by Paolo (paolo@ideafuture.con (look closely)) on Wednesday January 26, @04:27PM EST (#434) (User Info) http://www.ideafuture.com |
| What Mozilla needs is what a little 3rd party MacOS browser upstart iCab has: the ability to ask before accepting cookies, and refuse all cookies from that domain from that point on. It is a lot more useful, because if some horrible site uses 5 cookies, or the admin has put on multiple-retry Apache cookieing it doesn't matter if you keep on hitting cancel, cancel, cancel, because it will take lots of time for them to go away. Any status reports on Mozilla as to whether this is possible with the latest? "In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche |
| A Practical Solution (one of em, anyway) for this. (Score:1) by Threemoons (threeILOVEHORMELmoons@usa.net) on Wednesday January 26, @12:56AM EST (#105) (User Info) |
| Hey...for Win** users at least anyway...go to http://www.thelimitsoft.com and download Cookie Crusher...tastes great, less filling, and it KILLS DOUBLECLICK CRAP DEAD! Works on IE, NS, and Opera! For even more fun use AdsOff (site under renovation; get a copy from someone who has it) Both of these utils are simple to use and stable! If enough people use em it may just force these idiots to be honest... **To Email me, make me not love Hormel anymore.** |
| Time to Act on Privacy Issues (Score:4, Interesting) by Eric_Grimm on Wednesday January 26, @12:58AM EST (#108) (User Info) |
| The government is too busy (and ineffectual) to protect individuals' privacy. The alternative most often mentioned in Inside-the-Beltway debates is "industry self-regulation." What this REALLY means is that there are no rules for Commerce to play by and government will just look the other way so long as consumers don't get too upset. It is a recipe for abuse of individual rights on an industrial scale.
Is there any alternative to these two options? You bet there is. The alternative is to empower individuals to police their own privacy. People shouldn't have to rely on the Federal Trade Commission or any bureaucratic agency to make sure their privacy is safe. This means making sure that every man, woman, and child has an ENFORCEABLE right to make sure their personal information is not used in a way they have not authorized. It also means making sure that all individuals have swift and certain REMEDIES against any business that (by negligence or deliberately) misuses personal data or fails to protect it.
This proposal would not be bad for business. To the contrary, it s essential to the viability of the new economy. Protection for individual privacy just provides a better incentive for business to be truly responsive to customer wants and needs.
Pipe dream? Not if enough people demand the rights they should already be able to enjoy. But the deal is ALREADY being cut in Washington next month to prevent YOU from exercisng the rights you should have.
Look at the list of panelists on what the Federal Trade Commission calls a "balanced" committee to examine how to protect consumer information. See http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/01/asrev.htm -- aside from one or two "token" privacy advocates, the whole panel is dominated by comercial internests -- such as representatives of the Direct Marketing Association AND the law firm that represented it (Piper & Marbury) AND several of its member companies.
So what can you do? Call your Member of Congress and both of your Senators. If you're really ambitious, call your state government representatives, too. For each office, get the name of the staffer who handles "Internet Privacy and Medical Privacy" issues. Tell that person that you are a constitutent, that you vote, and that it is important to you for Congress to empower individuals to protect their own privacy on the Internet. Ask if your Congressperson or Senator has a position on this issue, and if so, what that position is.
Then point out how you are upset by how the FTC has composed its Advisory Panel principally of industry representatives. Tell your elected officials that you do not feel safe when government agencies puts representatives of the Wolves in charge of writing the rules for protection of the Sheep.
If you learn anything particularly interesting on the subject, post it here on /.
Other contacts (who may have good ideas on how to get involved in making sure lawmakers make good rules) are Diedre Mulligan at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Mark Rotenberg at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. |
| Dataprotection Act : EU and UK (Score:2, Informative) by tubs (craig@tubbyc.freeserve.couk) on Wednesday January 26, @05:24AM EST (#260) (User Info) |
| There is a nice law in the UK (and EU) called the data protection act. Basically it says you are not allowed to keep inaccurate information, pass on information without my prior consent and when asked you must allow me to view this information. Why doesn't the US do somthing like this? Its not about interfereing with your rights, its to stop business from abusing your information. |
| Re:Dataprotection Act : EU and UK (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27, @02:09AM EST (#473) |
| The reason is that american companies do not like the idea of being subjected to such a rule.
Also, what do you know about the enforcement mechanism for the EU Data Protection Directive? If I am not mistaken, enforcement power remains in the hands of government agencies rather than individuals in the EU. |
| Re:Dataprotection Act : EU and UK (Score:1) by tubs (craig@tubbyc.freeserve.couk) on Thursday January 27, @01:08PM EST (#488) (User Info) |
| From what I understand it is up to the goverment to enforce the regulations, specifically the "data protection registrar" who is appointed by the goverment, but is supposed to be independant. The Registrar can then take companies and individuals to court for breaking the Data Protection Act. Yes individuals can be taken to court (for example if someone asked a police friend to "get some details" for them, the Police Officer would be taken to court not the Police Force) From what I understand (I have only browsed the act) hefty fines and Jail terms (for directors etc) are the order of the day, so the registrar does actually have teeth. |
| Re:Dataprotection Act : EU and UK (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29, @10:10AM EST (#510) |
| There's one tiny problem with the European database laws: they require that companies and individuals report the existance of their databases to their government. The creation of such laws at the end of a century in which governments killed more than 100 million people is breathtakingly obtuse. Someone mentioned the Neatherlands had refused to go join this system; well, maybe they have better memories. A particular activist once related how he got his start: while in basic training (US Army back in the days of the draft), an aquainance told him of an incident he had witnessed as a young boy in the then Nazi occupied Neatherlands. An entire family was executed on the spot in front of their house when the father couldn't produce a pistol that was listed in a government gun registration database. And we all know how the US Census supplied the data to allow the US government to round up Japanese-American citizens after our entry into the war (and before you say this was only a necessary wartime measure, ask yourself why their land and other property wasn't returned to them after the war...). |
| Re:Time to Act on Privacy Issues (Score:1) by NecrosisLabs on Wednesday January 26, @10:54AM EST (#349) (User Info) |
| Did anyone else find this comment to be a bit rich: "Moreover, he adds, DoubleClick itself would hand over to privacy advocates the list of participating companies if it could. But as in many lines of business, partners frown when their relationships are disclosed without their permission, he says." Did it cross their minds that other people might feel that way too? |
| Re:Time to Act on Privacy Issues (Score:2) by warpeightbot (taliesin at-sign speakeasy.org) on Wednesday January 26, @11:49AM EST (#368) (User Info) http://www.babcom.com/~taliesin |
| Now, what I thought I just read was "Government is ineffectual" followed by "Call your congresscritter." Ummmm, huh? Government is not the answer to individual privacy, just as government is not the answer to individual security. Government can make it easier or more difficult to do these things, but ultimately it comes down to individual responsibility. Frankly, the best way for government to make anything easier is to get the hell out the way and let us do our thing. (Actually, the Europeans' various privacy legislation isn't such a bad attempt, but if you think the American Congress is going to pass any such thing, I have a steak dinner that says you're sadly mistaken.) Folks, our privacy is being taken away with technology. We can use technology (or the lack of it) to fight this. Junkbuster is an excellent example. Refusing supermarket club cards, and choosing who you shop with by how they respect your privacy, is another. Joining EFF, and contributing to other worthy organizations like EPIC, is yet another. We might be able, over time, to bludgeon the rotters in the District O'Crime into respecting us... which is why EPIC and such are worthy causes. But for the nonce, we are far more effective at protecting our privacy as individuals than as subjects of the Imperial Federal Government. IF your congresscritter will listen, talk to him. My last one would not (in fact, she was a Communist... but I digress). But in the short term, protecting privacy is simply a matter of using your head and the word "no"... and voting with your feet. Oh, one way to keep track of issues that I haven't seen posted here before: The Privacy mailing list, which IIRC is a digest of comp.society.privacy (not posting to Usenet is a good way to keep one's email private!), which is available from privacy-request@vortex.com. Simply being aware of what's out there is one of the best ways to run a clean operation. In The Art of War Sun Tsu says that if you know your enemy, and you know yourself, you have already won half the battle. You can use the Net, one of the very things being used to take your privacy, to learn about the enemy. You can learn what it knows about you. And once you do that, you can then figure out how to control it, make it work *for* you. I leave the rest to the reader. -- There is no spoon. |
| Re:Time to Act on Privacy Issues (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:45PM EST (#427) |
| > In The Art of War Sun Tsu says that if you know > your enemy, and you know yourself, you have > already won half the battle. Wait, didn't G.I. Joe say that? Nevermind... |
| There's Government and there's Government (Score:1) by Eric_Grimm on Thursday January 27, @02:23AM EST (#474) (User Info) |
| Perhaps you did not read my post carefully enough. As you know, EPIC and EFF are both (to a greater or lesser degree) engaged in discussions about HOW the government should help solve this problem. Your problem is that you make the mistake of thinking of the "government" in monolithic terms.
The argument I made is a little more subtle. There are two different approaches to the issue. The one I criticize involves an administrative agency serving as policeman. In other words, if you want a remedy from a merchant, then you have to ask the FTC and the FTC gets to decide whether you get any remedy (in other words, they can tell you they are too busy).
The reason I suggest calling Congress is that there is a *second* Governmet solution that works better (especially when COUPLED with technology). The *second* approach involves tha passage of a law that empowers *every single consumer* to act as his or her own "mini-FTC" and to go directly after a merchant. If the merchant doesn't satisfy the customer, then the customer has a right to go to court -- no need to ask the FTC for *permission* first.
Get it? There is a difference if you think about it. Now, please re-read the earlier post. |
| Big Brother 1984 (Score:1, Interesting) by nael (info@shopdifferent.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:59AM EST (#110) (User Info) http://www.shopdifferent.com |
| Can anyone say BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU! Orwell warned us about this! Did we listen no! We just stood there and let this merger go through without even saying a word. Yet, today we're here arguing it as if we weren't aware of it. Even if we choose to use netscape or I.E., the damage is already done. All they need is the information that they collected of you on each web site. For example, all you need todo is click on one of those banner ads, they can track whom you are , which web site you visited, where you visited, how long you were there for, what ip address you used, even your user name and email. Its not the goverment we fear regualting the net, its these mega corparations that get bigger and bigger every day. We need regulation to prevent anyone company from dominating this industry and I for one would not mind goverment intervention so long as it protects my rights as a consumer, and as user of the web. Even better lets bring the ACLU involoved in this. Isn't a violation of our civil liberty. (I'm just fumed at this right now). For example, I would not mind seeing is a community on the web thats elected by internet users, since we are the citzens of the net. We can vote for them online and no other form of media or voting method allowed. Lets create our own internet goverment body, that can appeal to both corprate america and protect our rights at the same time. Remeber today its just collecting names and emails, tommorow its collecting your personal profile, whom you chatted with, what messages you posted, what you purchased, what did you use to purchase, and even sell your information to other online retailes. They tel us they want to offer us special discount by authorizing to sell our names to their partners. But, are they doing more harm than good? He that hath a trade, has an estate. (Ben Franklin) |
| Re:Big Brother 1984 (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:03AM EST (#226) |
| Who said you needed to click on the banner ad? With cooperation from sites in the network, they can just track you period. |
| How many id's can thay give out? (Score:1) by moore (moore@eds.org) on Wednesday January 26, @01:01AM EST (#111) (User Info) http://warez.slashdot.org |
| when I opted out thay toled me my ID it wasent a very long number. Now I am sure that thay have more then enough id's for every one in the world, probly way more then enough, but what if there were houdreds or thousands of people continusaly making requests for cookies and then deleteing them. How long untill we could exaust there ID space? |
| Only for Slashdot (Score:1) by solar on Wednesday January 26, @01:10AM EST (#118) (User Info) |
| I only except cookies from a VERY select group of websites, /. being one of them. Cookies are bad, very bad (except the chocolate chip kind, yum!). |
| pick one (Score:1) by Len-Brabant on Wednesday January 26, @01:10AM EST (#119) (User Info) |
| holy cow batman ... big brother internet is stealing our anominity !!! quick robin ... to the batcave! where ya all been ... none a ya listed in the fonebook ... been admitted to or treated @ a hospital ... bought batteries at radio shack, yada yada yada? chrissake lookit all the cameras gawking @ ya, why the hill aren't ya all up in arms about that one? remember ... those who do not learn from their errors are doomed to repeat them! twit filters, hosts.allow, hosts.deny, >/dev/nul (ya, 1 l alias) .*.conf, blah, blah, blah ... been around a long time. use um. or go live in a cave. Len Brabant |
| Here's the middle ground I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting) by MattMann on Wednesday January 26, @01:21AM EST (#129) (User Info) |
Now, if we could lay some ground rules for trust, I wouldn't mind having ads personalized for me and my tastes. I mean, I like drinking beer, and I don't like cola, so I'd rather see beer ads than cola ads. However, I'd want it to be "relatively" anonymous. That is (random list off the top of my head),
I would accept promises from companies. I think most are trustworthy enough. But, promising alone is not enough, I want recourse and/or punishment. IRS employees keep getting caught sneaking peeks: the death penalty is what I'd like to see (don't like it? don't peek and even if you are the President (hi Echelon) something they've been known to do) But assuming others aren't that etreme, how about firing, pension loss... something serious. At least tell me what the punishment is. A simpler case to illustrate: I haven't forgiven Real Networks for its spying transgressions, but they could have repaired a lot of trust if they said, "we screwed up, and we are going to delete all the info we grabbed, plus one month worth of all our server logs, and we fired that guy." A more global pet proposal of mine is this: as a compromise between the privacy nuts and data gulpers: if information about me is stored in a database and includes any sort of address/contact information, then the database owner must tell me once a year what they have on me. It would cost only a small amount per person, and if it does not have that much economic value, don't keep it. Then at least the average person would develop an awareness of what's out there. |
| Re:Here's the middle ground I'd like to see (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @04:28AM EST (#237) |
Doubleclick has always been, shall we say, "aggressive" towards gathering customer information. A more moderate philosophy is embraced by the up-and-coming company, Engage Technologies. Their avowed policy is best summed up in the quote "Engage doesn't collect or store any personally identifiable data, or any data that is considered sensitive or controversial (medical information, adult content, etc)." Sorry, they won't be targetting hemorroid cream to you any time soon. Despite taking this stance towards privacy, their ad targetting still works well. UNIX geeks will be able to see UNIX ads on Yahoo and other non-UNIX sites since the ad-serving software knows that cookie 1AF48939948FAB399091 (aka you) reads freshmeat.net frequently. It has no idea who cookie 1AF48939948FAB399091 is, and it doesn't need to. Personally, I'd much rather see ads that I have a bat's chance in hell of relating too than the stupid 'punch the monkey' crap. And when I don't feel like wasting bandwidth on any ads at all, there's always JunkBuster. |
| Re:Here's the middle ground I'd like to see (Score:1) by tietokone-olmi (at-my-home-page-dummy) on Wednesday January 26, @03:05PM EST (#420) (User Info) http://www.pp.htv.fi/~ksandstr/ |
Umm.... couldn't everyone just lie about their name to the browser that they're using? Although some systems might take the name information from somewhere else, at least GNU and BSD users should be pretty safe. No .sig to see here. Move along, citizen. |
| Re:Here's the middle ground I'd like to see (Score:1) by MattMann on Wednesday January 26, @03:32PM EST (#423) (User Info) |
| yes, tricks like that work some of the time. The danger is: if you ever buy anything online, anywhere, using a credit card, and you have a static ip address, forget about cookies and lying in your registrations, you are at risk of being identified everywhere, all the time, very accurately, and tied into your full credit, purchasing, and healthcare histories. I think it would be nice to be able to use e-commerce without this kind of a problem. |
| Re:Here's the middle ground I'd like to see (Score:1) by Chalst (cas-at-cs.brandeis.edu) on Thursday January 27, @11:45AM EST (#486) (User Info) |
| I don't think that your proposal would preserve anonymity. It is quite possible to infer who someone is from apparently anonymous information. For example, a point made a while back on the PRIVACY mailing list is that date of birth and ZIP code uniquely identifies a high proportion of US residents. |
| Re:Here's the middle ground I'd like to see (Score:1) by mftuchman (emefftee@piggy.mindspring.com) on Friday January 28, @12:01PM EST (#504) (User Info) |
| I know how you feel...When I first got my yahoo mail account for the purpose of receiving primarily commercial email, I was excited about the idea of targeted specific advertisements. I figured - hey - if they want to sell stuff without killing trees, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. But now my trust has eroded considerably. I question the viability of the middle ground simply because there is nothing to keep these merchants honest. True, they can lose business if word gets back, but it's a big if. Meanwhile they're making money selling your name behind your back and despite lip service to "trust" and "privacy" I'd like to see aggressive enforcement of these trust agreements. Every company must be required to disclose the source of data collected for each person, upon request. Consumers should be allowed to track back and verify who sold their name without permission. Then the heavy fines can begin - it's no different from the no-call lists for telemarketers. If they call you back against your will, you can collect penalties. |
| Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:5, Funny) by Greyfox (nride@uswest.net) on Wednesday January 26, @01:23AM EST (#132) (User Info) |
| Someone pull the doubleclick cookie out of your cookie file and post it. Then we can all paste it into our cookie file and re-chmod the cookie file to be read only. Then it'll end up just being one person hitting every web page on the planet thousands of times a day (It would actually be interesting to see what kind of junk mail that guy gets after a year.) Someone had to put all that chaos there! |
| Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:1) by cyanoacrylate (crispin@@myra.com) on Wednesday January 26, @03:04AM EST (#198) (User Info) |
| Not with my cookie... Maybe you'd like to offer yours up instead??? Or maybe we could steal Bill Gates'. But the best alternative, as mentioned above, is to turf all traffic to and from doubleclick.net at the firewall. (alternative for those without a firewall: set up a http server and set hosts table entry for *doubleclick.* to localhost (requests for doubleclick crap are redirected to your http server, which returns an error)). Damn nested brackets - I hated Lots of Irritating and Silly Parentheses. It was the silliest language I have ever seen! And for the rest of the world, they can wait for the consumer advocacy groups to make this practice illegal (if they can). Happy Surfing! |
| Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:2) by QuMa (fvw+slashdot@var.cx) on Wednesday January 26, @09:34AM EST (#316) (User Info) http://www.var.cx |
| are wildcards allowed in /etc/hosts???? (Not that it matters in this case, all doubleclick ads are from ad.doubleclick.net. But that could change). |
| Serious, Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:2, Interesting) by willitheowl (willitheowl(gmxde)) on Wednesday January 26, @04:00AM EST (#224) (User Info) |
| I wouldn't rate this funny, since it can be a very good means of boycott. One could create a special cookie (and mail-address) for this purpose and send all the Mail back to all the senders or such stuff. I would have real impact, when some ten thousands have the same identity. One could even fake one global PII-id (with a little hack in the Browser). That could be used to make public what immense amount of data is stored and collect by companies. It would sure get the medias/publics attention. cu, Robert |
| Re:Serious, Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:2) by Tau Zero (spherethis@youknownottoincludethis.yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @11:49AM EST (#367) (User Info) |
One could create a special cookie (and mail-address) for this purpose and send all the Mail back to all the senders or such stuff. I would have real impact, when some ten thousands have the same identity.Many Slashdotters are already doing something like this to news sites like nytimes.com (slashdoted/slashdot or cypherpunk/cypherpunk). However, I don't know how many of them delete their cookies after every session (I do). Failing to delete the cookie allows tracking them upon their return, which I refuse to do. As far as these sites are concerned, I'm a new guy every time. Exchanging cookies (like wearing and swapping masks) is a great twist on this concept. I like it. |
| Re:Serious, Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:1) by A.Gideon on Wednesday January 26, @01:14PM EST (#398) (User Info) http://www.gideon.org/andrew/ |
| At least at the moment, the real cookies being used are 8 hex digits representing an increasing value, with the name of 'id'. There's also what appears to be a temporary of A=id that is replaced at the second ad view. I've used a few, but the latest appears to be around d81af???, where the final three digits are missing because...well, guess. So a perfectly valid value would likely be id=d81af000. |
| Re:Serious, Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:2) by Kris_J (Kris_Johnson@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @04:01AM EST (#478) (User Info) http://krisjohn.cjb.net |
One could create a special cookie (and mail-address)The mail address should be postmaster@localhost.com - if someone does a set of cookies for doubleclick et al with this e-mail address, I'd be most interested in using it... [I hereby grant full permission for any and all to retransmit, archive, republish and broadcast all of my postings to Slashdot, past, present and future] |
| Re:Serious, Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:1) by Kris_J (Kris_Johnson@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @04:02AM EST (#479) (User Info) http://krisjohn.cjb.net |
| Oops. No ".com" (*sheepish*) [I hereby grant full permission for any and all to retransmit, archive, republish and broadcast all of my postings to Slashdot, past, present and future] |
| Sure, I'll set up an internet account tonite! (Score:1) by reality-bytes on Wednesday January 26, @04:51AM EST (#249) (User Info) http://REALOS.cjb.net |
| Seriously, I will, then I'll send you a cookie :) |
| Re:Sure, I'll set up an internet account tonite! (Score:1) by spodpit on Wednesday January 26, @05:44AM EST (#262) (User Info) http://www.spodpit.freeserve.co.uk/ |
| Assuming that cookies get modified over time depending on where you go, wouldn't it be slightly better to have a group of x people. They start by all using the cookie from person 1, then after a set period of time (1 week - 1 month say) they all start using the copy that person 2 has, then person 3 ... and so on. This way, even if the cookie value changes they'll be denied tracking information! |
| Re:Lets all use the same cookie! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @07:28AM EST (#282) |
| Someone pull the doubleclick cookie out of your cookie file and post it. Then we can all paste it into our cookie file and re-chmod the cookie file to be read only. Then it'll end up just being one person hitting every web page on the planet thousands of times a day (It would actually be interesting to see what kind of junk mail that guy gets after a year.) It would be nice if that cookie is associated with the e-mail address of someone at DoubleClick. |
| OK...everyone use this cookie (Score:2) by Brian Knotts (bknotts@europa.com) on Wednesday January 26, @12:08PM EST (#378) (User Info) http://xfmail.slappy.org/ |
| This one is as good as any, I figure. I just created it by hand: .doubleclick.net TRUE / FALSE 1920499166 id bc2ff937 New XFMail home page |
| You can do better. :-) (Score:2, Interesting) by Mechanist on Wednesday January 26, @02:17PM EST (#411) (User Info) |
| Here's an alternate idea that's more appealing from a Discordian sort of perspective.... With a little Perl/Python/whatever hackery, you could easily create a script to randomize you cookie files. It's easy, you just open the file, read the cookie values, change a few random digits here and there, and write it back out. Ideally the new cookie should have the same format as the old one, so that it looks like valid data even though it's random junk. Then set up a cron job to run this script at regular intervals. And set your browser prefs to just accept all cookies, because you know they're going to get scrambled anyway. Voila, every day you are a different person to the likes of doubleclick. But they can't tell that they're getting bogus data, and so they aggressively attempt to target market these random non-persons. The only thing to keep in mind is to periodically quit/restart your browser, so as to wipe out any memory-resident cookies. I did this at my last job, but I lost the script in transition and haven't gotten around to re-creating it. But it's easy for anyone with even a little bit of Perl skill. |
| Re:You can do better. :-) (Score:2) by Kris_J (Kris_Johnson@yahoo.com) on Thursday January 27, @04:05AM EST (#481) (User Info) http://krisjohn.cjb.net |
| I remember someone claiming to have written a cookie mangler. It would just randomly change a bit here and a bite there, without any regard for what the cookie was supposed to look like. They said you could then surf to the sound of badly written web servers crashing... [I hereby grant full permission for any and all to retransmit, archive, republish and broadcast all of my postings to Slashdot, past, present and future] |
| We Await silent Tristero's Empire (Score:1) by Guy Harris (guy@alum.mit.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @01:29AM EST (#136) (User Info) |
Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn. |
| Re:We Await silent Tristero's Empire (Score:2) by Guy Harris (guy@alum.mit.edu) on Wednesday January 26, @01:30AM EST (#139) (User Info) |
Sorry about that; not intended to be posted to this thread. Please moderate it and this reply to -1, Offtopic. |
| Re: Uh. (Score:1) by Kibbled (ikibbles@SPAM.bigfoot.com) on Wednesday January 26, @02:33AM EST (#186) (User Info) http://kibbles.staticky.com |
Hmm... and you get moderated... up? Sleep. It does the body good. |
| IANALAY? (Score:3, Interesting) by ajs (ajs@ajs.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:30AM EST (#140) (User Info) http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/ |
| Could someone with the legal credentials please explain why this is legal? It seems to me that offering an opt-out on per-user-per-site tracking on a site that I've never visited, but still tracking me should not be legal. Is there anything in the electronic privacy act or any other such legislation that gives the courts a way to stop DC from doing this? There are an awful lot of non-Slashdot users out there who have no idea they are being tracked. If I start finding Web hit logs in my TRW statement, I'm going to be pissed. -- Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com) Perl Guy and Executive Glue Sniffer |
| Re:IANALAY? (Score:1) by lovebyte (lovebyte2000@yahoo.com) on Wednesday January 26, @05:05AM EST (#254) (User Info) |
| IANAL either, but I doubt tracking people without their knowledge is legal in the European Union. There is a law on privacy that all 15 EU countries have signed (but one. the Netherlands. Shame on you! It has been said that the average Dutch person has got some information stored about him in 400 databases! Scary.). This law implies that no data should be kept about someone without his/her knowledge. Unfortunately, who's going to sue anyone? The poor web surfer? I don't think so. We need a consumer association to do it.
|
| Re:IANALAY? (Score:2) by ajs (ajs@ajs.com) on Wednesday January 26, @08:06AM EST (#289) (User Info) http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/ |
| If there truely is a law against this kind of tracking in the EU, then the authorities should be the ones pressing charges. -- Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com) Perl Guy and Executive Glue Sniffer |
| IANAL either... (Score:1) by joshwa (josh@jwand.dhs.-oh.are.gee-) on Wednesday January 26, @08:51AM EST (#301) (User Info) http://jwand.dhs.org |
| Could someone with the legal credentials please explain why this is legal? Is there anything in the electronic privacy act or any other such legislation that gives the courts a way to stop DC from doing this? IANAL either, but I've just done a fair amount of research in law reviews, etc., and basically there aren't any laws on the books that cover this. Remember, the right to privacy is not in the Constitution, but was extrapolated by Warren & Brandeis in 1890, and enumerated into 4 torts (Appropration of Likeness for Commercial Benefit (eg product endorsements), Pulic Disclosure of Private Facts (eg tabloid press), Intrusion into Seclusion (eg peeping toms), and False Light (ie imputing upon an individual views not held by said individual)) by subsequent review and case law. There have been innumerable law review articles examining implications of Warren & Brandeis for the online environment, but precious little case law (US vs. Geocities, McVeigh vs. AOL were both settled without a ruling) to flesh out online privacy issues. However, most legal commentators agree (don't have my cites near me at the moment, but I'll provide them upon request) that these 4 torts hold very little authority for online privacy, because the case law surrounding them is very specific (see examples above). It would take a very gutsy judge (and eventually a gutsy Supreme Court) to apply historic privacy case law to the Internet. On top of that, Congress hasn't taken the best approach to legislating privacy; almost all privacy legislation has been piecemeal, addressing a specific technological situation (witness the legislation from the 80's dealing with large centralized 'data banks' and 'data files' that is hopelessly irrelevant now). Congress has not passed and lacks the will to pass (can we say corporate campaign contributors?) sweeping general privacy legislation, or even information privacy legislation. And given the makeup of the FTC panel mentioned above, things are not looking any rosier. |
| Ok. I'm scared now. (Score:1) by god_of_the_machine (ryan (at) thiessen (dot) com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:43AM EST (#163) (User Info) http://www.ryan.thiessen.com/ |
| Okay... I just was reading this article and thought: "Who cares anyhow? As if they are really tracking me." Co-incidentally, I installed Netscape 4.7 on my machine that only had IE installed. One of the first sites I went to featured a doubleclick ad for Telus, the phone company where I live. I never gave out any information about myself with the new browser, so they are definately tracking beyond just the cookie files. Either they are doing reverse-DNS lookups, or track the fact that I had just been logged in with the same IP with a different browser and made the transistion themselves. Either way, they are good, and it's frightening. Hopefully they don't link me to any pr0n sites... -- "Progress is the God of the Machine" |
| Re:Ok. I'm scared now. (Score:1) by Megane (btomlin.texas@net) on Wednesday January 26, @10:05AM EST (#326) (User Info) |
| Co-incidentally, I installed Netscape 4.7 on my machine that only had IE installed. One of the first sites I went to featured a doubleclick ad for Telus, the phone company where I live. I never gave out any information about myself with the new browser, so they are definately tracking beyond just the cookie files. Either they are doing reverse-DNS lookups, or track the fact that I had just been logged in with the same IP with a different browser and made the transistion themselves. Did you fill in your e-mail address as requested when you installed Netscape? They can get that information without using cookies. Then when you connect to them, wham bam, they can give you a freshly baked cookie based on a database lookup of your e-mail address. IMHO, a web browser should be used only for web browsing, and not for reading usenet or email. So I always set my email address to "president@whitehouse.gov" or some similar bogosity. One other possiblity is that they could have looked up your IP block geographically. Even with ISPs that are located in more than one city, the dialups themselves have fixed IP block ranges, so it is not impossible to determine your city from your IP address. It just takes time to build the database. -- tr/@./.@/; |
| no matchup ? (Score:1) by serialk (-sld@themail.com) on Wednesday January 26, @01:52AM EST (#170) (User Info) http://aboutguide.tripod.com |
| but how can they tell any relationship if yopuare on anonymously ? |
| Change in doubleclicks reasoning (Score:1) by puppet10 on Wednesday January 26, @02:02AM EST (#172) (User Info) |
| One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that this represents a change in what double click says it is trying to do. From their site: Why shouldn't I opt-out? DoubleClick believes all users should have a positive Web experience. Because of this belief, we allow advertisers to control the frequency (the number of times) a Web user sees an ad banner. We believe that frequency control makes advertising on the Web less intrusive by insuring that users are not bombarded with repeat ad messages. Opting-out removes our ability to control frequency of exposure to individual users. How does tracking the surfing habits of individual users and attaching that to a name, address, etc. promote this (false) reason to put their cookie on your system in the first place. Because of this kind of misuse of cookies I turn them off for all sites except the ones I choose to allow to put their cookies on my machine. (Offtopic aside: the security zone idea in IE is really useful when coupled with their add on tools that allow you to restrict or trust a site with a quick click on the menu, is any of this functionallity going into Mozilla? If not it really should) |
| Help your friends (Score:1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @02:10AM EST (#174) |
| I wrote and sent this e-mail around. Maybe you'll want to do the same and help some other people out. [Note: NYT article was copied and pasted directly below the 3 steps.] Many of you will consider the following steps very valuable. If this e-mail ruins your day, you need a vacation. If you are concerned about your privacy (or lack thereof), I suggest you: 1) READ the article below found on the internet edition of the January 25, 2000 New York Times and credited to CNET News.com. [ARTICLE GOES HERE] |
| Realy Bad? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @02:11AM EST (#176) |
| I am not sure, if it's really that bad to get targeted banners. If doubleclick knows my interests and preferences, they can only send aadvertisment for services I am interested in. This is much better than being spammed wirh banners I am not interested in. |
| Re:Realy Bad? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, @03:32AM EST (#210) |
| If that floats your boat, go for it! In exchange for your customized advertising: Every click is:..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER ..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FO REVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER..FOREVER |