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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">"Web Beacons"
From alt.privacy.spyware

Poster: Steven Burn
Subject: "Yahoo spying on users"
Message-ID:

"Yahoo is now using something called "Web Beacons" to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you're doing and where you are going - similar to cookies. Take a look at their updated privacy statement:

»http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/pixels/details.html

About half-way down the page, in the section "Outside the Yahoo!
Network", you'll see a little "click here" link that will let you "opt-out" of their new method of snooping. I strongly recommend that you do this.

Once you have clicked that link, you are opted out. Notice
the "Success" message the top the next page.

Be careful because on that page there is a "Cancel Opt-out" button that, if clicked, will *undo* the opt-out. Feel free to forward this to other groups.

--
Regards

Steven Burn
Ur I.T. Mate Group
www.it-mate.co.uk

Keeping it FREE!</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

A little info on what exactly a web beacon is:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">Web beacon
Last modified: Thursday, August 21, 2003

Also called a Web bug or a pixel tag or a clear GIF. Used in combination with cookies, a Web beacon is an often-transparent graphic image, usually no larger than 1 pixel x 1 pixel, that is placed on a Web site or in an e-mail that is used to monitor the behavior of the user visiting the Web site or sending the e-mail. When the HTML code for the Web beacon points to a site to retrieve the image, at the same time it can pass along information such as the IP address of the computer that retrieved the image, the time the Web beacon was viewed and for how long, the type of browser that retrieved the image and previously set cookie values.

Web beacons are typically used by a third-party to monitor the activity of a site. A Web beacon can be detected by viewing the source code of a Web page and looking for any IMG tags that load from a different server than the rest of the site. Turning off the browser's cookies will prevent Web beacons from tracking the user's activity. The Web beacon will still account for an anonymous visit, but the user's unique information will not be recorded.</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Opt-out info

Am I the only one that finds this VERY ironic since they're the same people that advertise ways to defeat spam?

Yahoo has always been spam. No surprise with this.

Been using Altavista for about 6 years now.

No complaints

Arasian.com RULES

<font face="Arial" size="3">he time the Web beacon was viewed and for how long</font>

Um sorry - wrong. Sure, the session time is gettable, but not how long. Most servers run 20 minute session timeouts, and without a request going to the server in that time, the session ends.

But look - that's not the point. ALL Servers collect these stats ALL THE TIME. FROM EVERYONE. Disabling cookies will stop a large percentage of sites from working and prevent a lot of USEFUL FEATURES working also.

This is just dumb paranoia at its worst.

What the hell do you care who knows your IP visited HTTP://WTF.com ?? If you're worried then you're doing some seriously illegal sh!t. Or you're German.

Tracking usage of sites provides VALUABLE INFORMATION to web site owners - being able to track entry and exit points, most visited pages etc. This means you can provide more of what works, and less of what doesn't. Trying to prevent collection of such data is POINTLESS and STUPID because you would defuse the best tool web site owners have of providing content that's specifically targetted at the majority of their audience.

Embedding images to track usage is NOT SPYWARE nor is it ADWARE. In the worst scenario it can skew the User Session count severely and let web site owners claim traffic levels that are thousands of times higher than is a "true" representation of their web site traffic.

Many unscrupulous operators use a locally hosted advertising banner to lie about their User Sessions when they are accessed by clients of the people they are advertising with.

Worry level: ZERO
Privacy issues: ZERO
Spyware rating: ZERO
Interest level: ZERO

Ok, how many of you clicked that link? :-p

I did... AND WAS AMUSED.

Just disable third-party cookies. I'm sure you can do the same with FireFaux.