#web bugs

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://youtu.be/EKzyifAvC_U” controls=”no” wmode=”transparent”] Proteja sua privacidade. Veja quem rastreia sua navegação na Web com o Ghostery. DETECTAR Ghostery vê a web “invisível”, rastreadores de detecção, web bugs, pixels, e beacons colocados em páginas da web por Facebook, Google, e mais de 500 outras redes de publicidade, fornecedores de dados comportamentais,…

One of the greatest discoveries made by spammers is web bugs.  Most of you have heard about cookies and know how to avoid or delete them, but what do you know about web bugs?  Well, they are a form of spyware and are very efficient in what they do:  tracking your every move.  When a spammer places a web bug into one of his e-mails, he will be able to tell exactly when you opened that e-mail, and if the e-mail address he has for you is valid.  The scary part is that you will not even know you’re being tracked by these web bugs.  If you think you’re safe from this tracking, you are wrong.

Even if you don’t open any e-mail unless you know who it’s from, you are still at risk.  Besides spammers, Internet marketers make use of the advantages of web bugs.  Did you ever notice the ads for items that you shopped for popping up when you open your browser?  That is because there were web bugs placed in a web site you visited. 

There is a difference between cookies and web bugs.  Browsers are able to reject cookies, but web bugs are generated as a Graphic Interchange Format (GIF).  Because GIFs are so frequently used all over the Internet, browsers will normally just accept them.  Anyone familiar with GIFs knows that they are images, so how is it that they’re not visible in e-mail and web sites?  Spammers and marketers are very shrewd when it comes to web bugs.  Spammers insert a tiny GIF, no larger than 1 X 1 pixels into their e-mails.  Marketers “hide” their web bugs right in the web site’s logo.  Since the GIF is disguised as a color in the background, you could look for it and still not see it. 

Have you ever sent or received an e-greeting card?  This is becoming common practice for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.  It’s so much simpler than going out to buy the card, then running to the post office to mail it.  When you send an e-greeting card, you are asked if you want to be notified when the recipient sees it.  Most people agree to this because they want to make sure it was “delivered”.  Web bugs are then set into action and will notify you about the receipt of your e-greeting card.

What really has privacy advocates up in arms about web bugs is the amount of personal information that is gathered.  Putting all of this information in a spammer’s hands could be very risky.  Think about it; a simple web bug will let the spammer know your IP address, the exact URL the web bug was attached to, when that web site was opened and what time it was opened.  In other words, your Internet activities are being monitored by teeny little stalkers. 

Privacy advocates are most concerned about the fact that web bugs are placed on web sites, tracking your Internet travels, when you never consented to this tracking.  You also were never aware of it.  The marketers that place the web bugs do not have to follow the web site’s privacy policy because they are third parties.  The terms of the privacy policy doesn’t apply to them, so there is nothing that you can do, because there was no violation.

I highly recommend this browser extension, which blocks web trackers.

I'm not a privacy nut, but all things being equal, I'd just as soon not be tracked like a mofo. The new Facebook stuff heightened my concerns a bit -- it never crossed my mind that that those Facebook and Twitter buttons were tracking me regardless of whether I clicked on them or not.

Ghostery identifies tracking bugs (aka web beacons, web bugs, page tags), such as pixel/image trackers and scripts, blocks them, and then gives you a pop-up report of what's been blocked. You can then click on those that were blocked and find out more about them. It takes like 10 seconds to install and another 15 to understand. Super simple.

I've been astounded by just how many trackers are embedded on sites I visit every day. For example, I just looked at an article on Wired.com and Ghostery found 11 trackers - Brightcove, ChartBeat, Disqus, DoubleClick, Facebook, Google AdSense, Google Analytics, Lotame, Microsoft Atlas, Omniture, and Twitter. Ignorance was bliss, I guess.

Some of those trackers (e.g. Google Analytics) provide important information to Wired.com, who is serving me something to read for free. I want the sites to get the advertising support they need to continue to produce great articles, but I hate the fact that it's all or nothing. Either I let these completely untrustworthy third parties run amok with my data, literally getting wealthy on something of value that I am creating simply by using the web, or I block them all.

I think I'm going to allow Google Analytics to track me -- mostly because I know people who rely on this data for their own sites and because I really do trust Google with my personal data more than Facebook -- but that's it. Everybody else can go fuck themselves.

This ad tracking stuff reminds me of the early days of iTunes, where everything was DRM. I wanted to support the musicians, but every time I downloaded something, there were all these barriers to sharing it with people. If my wife and I wanted to both listen to an album on our iPods, we had to buy two copies. Bullshit. So I downloaded stuff illegally because it was the only non DRM option -- sometimes after buying one DRM'd copy legally. Nuts. Nowadays, I buy just about everything I listen to, and it's no biggie.

I kind of feel the same way about this stuff. I want to support people producing good quality web content, but I don't like not knowing what I'm giving up for it. By blocking the ads, I'm getting something for free. Maybe one day someone will figure out a truly above-board system -- transparent, opt-in, ability to view your own tracked data, etc -- and popularize it.

The evolution of Ghostery under Better Advertising's ownership over the last few months has been fast paced. The Ghostery team's goal has been to bolster your capacity for bug free web browsing, which brings us to V.2.1 of Ghostery.

New in V.2.1:

Refreshing your browser to implement option updates is no longer necessary - Ghostery now recognizes updates automatically.

The Ghostery bug list has an automatic weekly update, available exclusively on an opt-in basis.

An On-Demand bug list update is also available by selecting the Ghostery ghost.

Detection of Flash and Silverlight cookies, with deletion available to users' on an opt-in basis, where the selected domains are deleted upon browser closure.

Detection of Web bugs embedded within IMG tags and iFrame page elements. Deletion of these tags is exclusively on an opt-in basis given blocking has the capacity to cause page breaks.

We're thrilled with all the feedback we received on the initial Beta, which helped us finesse the final release. Keep the feedback coming and share your love for Ghostery with other users'.

Rose

Community Manager