The technique is that DoubleClick pays the adult site to put a 1x1 pixel
invisible graphic on their site. When your browser hits the site, it also
loads the graphic which is served from DoubleClick's servers so your browser
also sends your DoubleClick cookie (you do have one, don't you?) to them
along with a referrer URL in the HTTP request that DoubleClick can then use
to know what site you are at currently.
Any site you hit with a DoubleClick ad or other image is tracking you. I
think they still claim that they will not link up your cookie with your
real name and other info that they also have in their databases, but who
trusts them?
I wish Netscape had a way to let me disable cookies to only certain web
servers or wildcards.
> "Emlyn (onetel)" wrote:
>
> I found this on slashdot, so lots of you have probably seen it. It's about web
> bugs; a method of monitoring who is viewing webpages when, which also works
> with html email and new postings. I'm not surprised that this happens, but I'm
> interested to see the exact techniques.
>
> WebBug FAQ:
> http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/wbfaq.htm
>
> Article about monitoring of porn & medical sites by Doubleclick (an
> interesting read)
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-01250.html
>
> I'm loving the wild west!
> Emlyn
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:33:49 MDT