Phil, my system had detected the use of "bugs" by your site. Personally, I believe the use of these entities to be even less honorable than the use of cookies. Most people don't even know that they exist and don't know how to stop them if they wanted. What justification can you offer for using these on us, without to the best of my recollection, ever informing us of their use? I'll give you the initial benefit of the doubt on this one because you have provided a valuable site for a long time, and have maintained it in an admirable manner. But I am extremely surprised by the appearance of bugs, to say the least. And please don't say that you need to know what articles people are looking at. The intrusion into our privacy involved by this practice is not worth that. I await your reply.
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Can you explain.....
exactly how this "intrusion of privacy" will actually affect your life? All sites collect information from visitors...this allows them to better serve you in the future. Obviously some sites have dubious intentions, however, Phil and the team at HOW have been nothing but honorable. Greg
exactly how this "intrusion of privacy" will actually affect your life? All sites collect information from visitors...this allows them to better serve you in the future. Obviously some sites have dubious intentions, however, Phil and the team at HOW have been nothing but honorable. Greg
Cookies
Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I have never heard the term 'bugs' and don't know exactly what they are. I can assure you we don't use them because I can't write them. We use cookies for the following: - To remember your name and home port so those fields populate automatically - In the beta test forums, to idenitfy the user so you can edit your own posts - A unique ID number so you can use Thread Tracker - The domain name of the link (if any) that brought you here for the very first time. We don't ever see this information unless you buy something in the chandlery, then we capture it. This helps us understand which of our promotional efforts are most effective. 99% of these are Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. The other 1% are other web sites that link to us. Not very juicy stuff. For traffic analysis, we use our server logs. That indicates what articles users read in the aggregate, but it is not tied to specific people. I'm kind of curious though... what kind of privacy issues do you think would, or could, occur here? Frankly, I can't think of anything that would be very useful.
Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I have never heard the term 'bugs' and don't know exactly what they are. I can assure you we don't use them because I can't write them. We use cookies for the following: - To remember your name and home port so those fields populate automatically - In the beta test forums, to idenitfy the user so you can edit your own posts - A unique ID number so you can use Thread Tracker - The domain name of the link (if any) that brought you here for the very first time. We don't ever see this information unless you buy something in the chandlery, then we capture it. This helps us understand which of our promotional efforts are most effective. 99% of these are Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. The other 1% are other web sites that link to us. Not very juicy stuff. For traffic analysis, we use our server logs. That indicates what articles users read in the aggregate, but it is not tied to specific people. I'm kind of curious though... what kind of privacy issues do you think would, or could, occur here? Frankly, I can't think of anything that would be very useful.
Web bug update
Just did a Google search on 'bugs' and 'privacy.' I found an article from 1999 explaining that a bug is planted in an image, usually 1 pixel by 1 pixel so it's invisible. The image is loaded from a different server so the logs from that server will reflect an IP address and a URL. Sounds to me like a very clumsy way of tracking inidivual use a very limited number of sites, because the hosting server must cooperate by putting the image on the site. The article goes on to define the violators as ad networks. This makes sense, because the technology has _very_ limited value to anyone else. Your security software may be dectecting images served from a different domain name, which we do. We operate numerous domains for various boats and share some of the images among our sites. Beyond that, all I can suggest is that you send me a specific url from our site and we'll see what we can see. Bottom line: based on the information in this article, our site is nowhere close to the profile described.
Just did a Google search on 'bugs' and 'privacy.' I found an article from 1999 explaining that a bug is planted in an image, usually 1 pixel by 1 pixel so it's invisible. The image is loaded from a different server so the logs from that server will reflect an IP address and a URL. Sounds to me like a very clumsy way of tracking inidivual use a very limited number of sites, because the hosting server must cooperate by putting the image on the site. The article goes on to define the violators as ad networks. This makes sense, because the technology has _very_ limited value to anyone else. Your security software may be dectecting images served from a different domain name, which we do. We operate numerous domains for various boats and share some of the images among our sites. Beyond that, all I can suggest is that you send me a specific url from our site and we'll see what we can see. Bottom line: based on the information in this article, our site is nowhere close to the profile described.
I don't believe there is such a "bug."
As a retired professor who taught some programming, my only understanding of a computer bug came from Commander Hopper of the US Navy. Back in the early fifties computers were so large that you could walk inside them and they were filled with tubes. Most of the time when the computer crashed, people would walk inside and find the tube that had burned out. One day, the computer crashed and Commander Hopper sent her yeoman in to check the tubes. He couldn't find any that were bad. Commander Hopper then walked through and found a moth had short circuted the system. She removed the moth, put it in envelop and placed in her desk. For most of us in the industry to this day, we still think to de-bug is to find out why the computer crashed. Now it has come to mean where there is a glich in the operating software. By the way, that moth is on display (or it was the last time I knew) in a computer museum in Boston.
As a retired professor who taught some programming, my only understanding of a computer bug came from Commander Hopper of the US Navy. Back in the early fifties computers were so large that you could walk inside them and they were filled with tubes. Most of the time when the computer crashed, people would walk inside and find the tube that had burned out. One day, the computer crashed and Commander Hopper sent her yeoman in to check the tubes. He couldn't find any that were bad. Commander Hopper then walked through and found a moth had short circuted the system. She removed the moth, put it in envelop and placed in her desk. For most of us in the industry to this day, we still think to de-bug is to find out why the computer crashed. Now it has come to mean where there is a glich in the operating software. By the way, that moth is on display (or it was the last time I knew) in a computer museum in Boston.
More Info on Bugs
Phil is right. Bugs are typically 1x1 pixel files. They were spawned on the internet after the existence of cookies became widely known and cookie blocking software came into wide use. They are clandestine monitoring and tracking devices. Phil, since you don't know about their existence on your site, let me explain exacly what happens on HOW. Bugs are sent to a user's PC when a reply to a post is opened on HOW. Any reply to any post. Opening the initial post on HOW doesn't spawn a bug, only opening the replies to the post does so. This activity was detected by Spyblocker software, a utility that I highly recommend. (link below) In previous versions of Spyblocker, it listed the HOW-related activity as blocking an ad. I always assumed that it was blocking a popup ad, but that apparently isn't so. On the newest version of Spyblocker, it describes this activity as blocking a bug. Somewhere within your loop, this information is being compiled. Greg, bugs were designed to benefit only the groups who gather information from their use. They are believed, in some way, to help websites to make more money by tracking users' internet activities. This type of clandestine monitoring of behavior is illegal by any level of government without a search warrant. My opinion is that clandestine monitoring of behavior by a business entity for financial gain is immoral. It is widespread on the internet, in the form of both bugs and spyware. Your opinion may differ.
Phil is right. Bugs are typically 1x1 pixel files. They were spawned on the internet after the existence of cookies became widely known and cookie blocking software came into wide use. They are clandestine monitoring and tracking devices. Phil, since you don't know about their existence on your site, let me explain exacly what happens on HOW. Bugs are sent to a user's PC when a reply to a post is opened on HOW. Any reply to any post. Opening the initial post on HOW doesn't spawn a bug, only opening the replies to the post does so. This activity was detected by Spyblocker software, a utility that I highly recommend. (link below) In previous versions of Spyblocker, it listed the HOW-related activity as blocking an ad. I always assumed that it was blocking a popup ad, but that apparently isn't so. On the newest version of Spyblocker, it describes this activity as blocking a bug. Somewhere within your loop, this information is being compiled. Greg, bugs were designed to benefit only the groups who gather information from their use. They are believed, in some way, to help websites to make more money by tracking users' internet activities. This type of clandestine monitoring of behavior is illegal by any level of government without a search warrant. My opinion is that clandestine monitoring of behavior by a business entity for financial gain is immoral. It is widespread on the internet, in the form of both bugs and spyware. Your opinion may differ.
Helpful information
What you're describing is the banner exchange from bCentral, a Microsoft web site, that appears at the bottom of the forum replies. It's a huge program that is used on many web sites, including many sailing web sites. The image and link both refer back to http://leader.linkexchange.com. The image tag has no code in it that would interact with cookies. Could it be that your Spyware is picking this up? I suppose it is possible that Microsoft is recording your use of this web site, but I doubt it. It's just not particularly valuable data, as it can only be tracked back to an IP address, the vast majority of which do not correspond to a person. So, here's my question: if Spyware didn't identify the popup correctly, what makes you think it's identifying the bug correctly?
What you're describing is the banner exchange from bCentral, a Microsoft web site, that appears at the bottom of the forum replies. It's a huge program that is used on many web sites, including many sailing web sites. The image and link both refer back to http://leader.linkexchange.com. The image tag has no code in it that would interact with cookies. Could it be that your Spyware is picking this up? I suppose it is possible that Microsoft is recording your use of this web site, but I doubt it. It's just not particularly valuable data, as it can only be tracked back to an IP address, the vast majority of which do not correspond to a person. So, here's my question: if Spyware didn't identify the popup correctly, what makes you think it's identifying the bug correctly?
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