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Gator Examined
Ben Perry writes "News.com.com has a story about a Harvard researcher's study on how Gator operates. The report 'provides some data as to how much advertising Gator is showing and to whom it is targeted' and focuses on where Gator replaces a site's ads with Gator's ads. Gator is facing several lawsuits because of this technique."
What browser are you using?
If you're using (gasp) MSIE (version 5.5 or greater, I think), it already has password saving and form filling. Other browsers (like Mozilla and Opera) should also have that capability, though I'm not 100% certain.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
I'd really like to know how effectual advertising via annoying popups really can be. I mean I thought it was proven that internet advertising doesn't work. Right now I'm reading slashdot with ads all over it, unless I'm looking right at them I'll never even think twice about them.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
"Eagle contends that advertisers are only permitted to target groups of sites, not individual Web sites. But on Tuesday, after being alerted to the existence of the Berkman study, Gator deleted marketing materials from its Web site that suggested otherwise. The deleted Web page, which had existed since at least February 2002, had promised: 'Gator can pop up your advertising or promotional message anywhere--even at a competitor's site.'" The beauty of the web is that they can delete whatever pages they'd like and archive.org still has them cached and readily available for viewing by the people they tried to keep in the dark.
Unless I missed something...
We have had dumbasses within our company install Gator, and it generates pop-ups on our intranet pages as well, not just "targeted" domains.
I didn't seem to see anything in there that covered that.
Personally however I'd recommend Password Safe for storing things like credit card numbers, bank details etc. It's not that I don't trust Mozilla to do the job, but I just prefer a standalone and simple program for that kind of thing. It also lets you add comments and notes and it's easy to copy it onto a keyring USB device and carry it around with the database.
Internet Options->Security->Custom level.
Tick disable rather than prompt for 'download signed activx controls'.
You could add gator to the restricted zone while your there.
I.O.U One Sig.
Or download spybot search & destroy - its really quite good at getting rid of GAIN and other nasty crap
Google-Watch's allegations have already been debunked many times on Slashdot.
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038
And Alta-Vista was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2013. So what? I doubt anyone's still going to be using their same computer on either date, and you can delete cookies if you feel like it.
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration.
They're called server logs, and just about every webserver keeps 'em. Apache and IIS do it by default.
Google won't say why they need this data:
Market research? Improving searches? etc.?
Google hires spooks
Heaven forbid anyone who used to work at CIA/NSA from making a living after they leave!!! Anyways, it's not like a security clearance would be useful for, say, running the intranet search engine at the Pentagon?
Google's toolbar is spyware
Before you install the toolbar Google VERY clearly states that info will be sent to them if you enable the advanced features - it even has "PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY, IT'S NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA" in red letters up the top. I'd say there isn't any better way to disclose what they're doing to users.
Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
There's a clear opt-out process. If it was opt-in, the cache would be essentially useless. As for it being illegal - I'll quote Microdoc News. There have also been complaints that the "Google cache" feature violates copyright, however the consensus seems to be that caching is a normal part of the functionality of the web, and that HTTP provides adequate mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google presumably respects; Google also honors the robots.txt file.)
If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears.
Translation: If they use a weakness in Google's algorithm and Google fixes the algorithm later, they whine about their rankings going down - which were inflated above other, more relevant ones by using a bug!
Talk about sour grapes... IIRC Google-Watch was started when its webmaster lost ranking for another of his sites due to the Google algorithms being changed.
Google is completely unaccountable.
They're a privately held company. They don't have to be accountable, as long as they stay within the law.
He would prefer that searches for, say, "Oliver North", turn up this, rather than this.
Quoting Brandt quoting himself: Regarding his opposition to Google's hegemony, Brandt says, "It feels like the right thing to do. It's the cyber equivalent of my draft resistance days." (see U.S. v. Brandt, 435 F2d 324, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, Dec. 4, 1970)