A bit about Web Bugs
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By this time many know about Cookies and the tracking possible with the use of them, however far fewer know about Web Bugs. These are very small and very hard to detect. Most are 1 pixel by 1 pixel image files that contain tracking information and some even have programing to report data back to their owners. Many sites, indeed this one, has webbugs. Chances are if you have ever been to a webpage that is not being paid for by the author, there are some banner ads on the page and as such they more than likely have web bugs in them. If you wish to read up a bit more on what a web bug is by someone who knows a lot more than I do about these things here is a excellent article by a source I use for many Security matters. www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200102/webbug.html Web Bugs are a bit hard to detect but they are not impossible. http://www.bugnosis.org/ offers a free web bug detector for Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x versions which is a plug in to detect possible web bug content on a webpage. You can go a bit more and try WebWasher ( http://www.webwasher.com/en/products/wwash/download_license.htm ) which will selectively filter many possible web trackers. These will help most get around the more commonly used web tracking devices. Hope you found this page a helpful. -Jo (aka easy2confuse) Additional Reading Web Bug Site List Web Bug Traffic Count Close This Browser Window |
I personally do not place web bugs, or cookies on my pages. However both the
Geocities and the Tripod servers set cookies and web bugs. Also the
wunderground weather gizmo has a possible web bug included in it's make up.
Since I make nothing from this page it is hosted by free webhosting servers
which do use these tools. I do not track anyones use other than to notice my
web counter on the main page and about once a month check the page stats on the
Geocities site as far as which pages are being seen the most. If you would
like more information about these pages or what data is collected as far as I
know, I will be more than happy to try to provide you with what details I can.
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2-06-2002