discuss: Using Webbug to track hits
Subject:
Re: Using Webbug to track hits
From:
Kian Spongsveen ####@####.####
Date:
21 Apr 2004 06:12:07 -0000
Message-Id: <200404210809.52973.sybase@kian.org>
On Tuesday 20 April 2004 23:19, Saqib Ali wrote:
> Hello,
>
> If everyone is willing to use webbug to tracks for
> each HOWTO, then I can setup neccessary PHP script and
> mysql DB @ http://tools.tldp.org to make this happen.
>
> Let me knoe what you all think.
>
> Thanks.
> Saqib Ali
> http://validate.sf.net ><./\/\.|_
>
I was sceptical when I first saw your link
(http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html), mainly because it was
from EFF. It's not like they wrote their webbug article because they think
it's such a great idea. However, they mainly complain about the fact that
most sites use webbugs without telling you. We should have a note about the
webbugs, and preferably help paranoid people disable the tracking (they could
e.g. block the tracking server in their firewalls). These webbugs are harder
to disable than cookies, which makes them a little more intrusive.
Webbugs are probably very annoying for anyone with a dial-on-demand setup
reading the TLDP docs from a CD! Any HTML distribution other than online
should remove the links IMHO.
I expect the other formats (PDF, RTF) are immune to tracking, which makes it
even less reliable. I find that I usually prefer PDF over other formats these
days, and I see frequent defenses of the txt format on this list (for users
with low-bandwidth connections or entirely offline, or for the limited
storage space they use as part of a Linux distribution).
- Kian Spongsveen
