Slashdot Mirror
Do Not Call Site Has AT&T Stats Tracker?
hookedup writes "The Register is carrying an article about suspicious content at the FTC's Do Not Call site. It has been a runaway hit with US consumers, with over fifty million signing up to avoid spam calls from telemarketers. But the web site hides a little secret: a 1x1 pixel image tracking visitors... and where does the trail lead but to the AT&T, one of the most persistent telemarketers." However, the tipster, James 'Kibo' Parry, notes: "There isn't any evidence proving they _are_ up to anything improper, but this relationship between the FTC and AT&T fails to avoid the potential for impropriety."
the "don't call me, spam me" list.. saying they are collecting millions of email from users and have a dubious privacy policy.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Slashdot runs MS ads.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Just a small nitpick - the article fails to mention that only users of browsers capable of (or set to by default) showing images can be tracked by this method.
Long live lynx!
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
I went to ftc.gov to see if such a link is standard operating procedure for them. It isn't on that site. Strange, no? Why would they track anyone who wants to stop receiveing phone ads? To make up for it in spam! :-)
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I don't really see where this is cause for alarm. For all we know it could be a counter.
Anyways, what's the worst that could happen? AT&T knows which web browsers people use and what resolution they're at? Oh no!
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Kibo is submitting to Slashdot? Party like it's 1989!
It is http://aens.net/
Att Managed Services. I assume that it the ISP that is hosting this site or something?
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Um...
AT&T Government Solutions Will Operate Do-Not-Call List
www.christopherlewis.com
The article says, "The FTC confirmed that AT&T Managed Services is its contractor, and hosts the website."
They don't need a 1x1 image to track usage... they have the server logs!
Big Brother and Ma Bell in cahoots? Say it's not so!
I'd be willing to bet that after the collosal failure of the FTC site after launch that the FTC sought the hosting services of a more robust entity. AT&T probably said "IT" first.
In that case, what everyone really wants to know is: "Is AT&T allowed ?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
It's just a tiny, wafer-thin image...
(please review Monty Python Meaining of Life prior to modding down)
10 MD
Sure, it seems like nothing now. But once all the Opera and Mozilla users have been rounded up, put into camps and executed it'll be too late.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I'd be willing to be that AT&T hosting people don't even know that the AT&T phone people exist.
Why do they need a 1x1 pixel tracking bug to maintain a Do-Not-Call list? Aren't the telephone numbers of the participants sufficient? What reason directly related to the administration of this list is there for this? If the answers to these questions were obvious, the Register (to give them the benefit of the doubt) wouldn't be asking them.
The coolest voice ever.
You must be new here. That's only one order of magnatude. Around here, that's pretty good.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Will someone please tell me what would prevent a telemarketing company outside the US from obtaining this very accurate list of phone numbers?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
How is this a problem? The URL is not dynamic, so unless there is a back-end conspiracy between the dnc list and AT&T, what the hell is AT&T going to do with 50 million IP addresses? They can't look them up to people unless they get info from elsewhere. If AT&T and the dnc list were sleeping together, then the dnc list could give AT&T the IP/name/phone/etc ANYWAY, and that would be a MAJOR betrayal of trust. It's probably just for web-traffic analysis-- pretty standard these days, so the dnc people can say, ooh, 3000 people per second are signing up, and the such.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I remember seeing one of AT&T's agents concerned about the amount of E-Mail being generated from the site and posted it on NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) which you can see here. I don't really think that there is any "shady" tactics going on here, I think it's more for one of their in house monitoring apps, especially considering the amount of traffic that they received initially.
Wait until the story is duped a few times, they should all add up to the right number eventually.
For all you know I could have been talking about the Japanese occupation of China, the US handling of accused terrorists, the US imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent or any other instance of mass imprisonment. Nothing said has anything to do with Goodwin?s Law, so bugger off ya Nazi. Oh dang.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Given that, this article is useless.
But even more so, if you go to the site it says at the bottom: This privacy policy states:There. Case solved. Stop being paranoid about such silly things. If you want to be paranoid, be paranoid that the MPAA might accidentally associate your IP with file sharing even if you don't file share, or be paranoid that John Ashcroft is using the PATRIOT Act or Patriot Act II (to be introduced in Congress soon) to spy on you for reasons unrelated to terrorism (as he has done). Better yet, donate some money to the ACLU to protect your civil liberties or to the EFF to protect your electronic freedoms.
Soooooo....
/ njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript">
What would happen if all of us started putting the below image on all of the websites that we run?
Hmm...
<img BORDER="0" NAME="DCSIMG" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" SRC="http://g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net/DCS000003_6D4Q
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
Shortly after I signed up for the Do Not Call list through the website, I began recieving calls (about 4 calls since around Sept 1, I believe) from AT&T about getting long distance service. Or I was eligable to recieve a phone card. Or something. I wasn't really listening. Since I live on a college campus there's really no reason for them to be calling.
Who doesn't like free music?
Here is the snippet from the page http://www.donotcall.gov/ Note that the img tag is embedded in the noscript tag. That is, this img is only loaded in graphical browsers that don't use javascript. Since AT&T has the government contract to implement the DNC list, I don't think there's anything sinister going on here, they just want a count of the number of users that don't use/enable javascript.
/ njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript">
-molo
<noscript>
<img BORDER="0" NAME="DCSIMG" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" SRC="http://g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net/DCS000003_6D4Q
</noscript>
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
There's nothing "weirdo" about using Lynx. It's very effective for many tasks, and far more efficient for using certain websites than Mozilla, et al.
bkr
It probably is a counter. AT&T is the company that the FTC contracted to host the DNC servers. That was mentioned in articles when the DNC site went up and got slammed. The articles stated that AT&T was scrambling to add extra servers to the pool to handle the unexpected load.
I'm glad this was reported, and I think it needs to be looked into more closely.
But.
There's this taunting little voice in my head wondering if somebody didn't say,
Web Developer 1: "Hey, let's add a web bug to Do Not Call page, and then we'll leak it to Slashdot."
Web Developer 2: "WTF would we want to do that?
Web Developer 1: "So when they find out about it, we can watch those Slashdot monkeys dance!"
Web Developer 2: "Yeah, yeah, dance dance dance in their tin-foil hats! Coool!"
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Just link that image into the slashdot home page. That ought to give them about 6 million worthless hits per day...
Got Code?
I would hope that "building" the site for $3.5 million also includes running it, ongoing maintenance, etc. Because if the government really paid AT&T $3.5 million to BUILD it and still has to pay some ongoing fee, they got ripped by an order or two of magnitude.
Government waste isn't surprising, but it's sad when it is made so obvious. A good percentage of the folks here at Slashdot could have done just as good a job for a fraction of the cost and STILL recorded a very good year income-wise.
The joke is on them. Opera lets you pretend to be any one of a multitude of web browsers. Right now, I'm MSIE 6.0, tomorrow I could be Mozilla 4.78. Technology is grand!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
I'd like to point out a reason why someone might put a 1x1 pixel gif in a web page.
Not all versions of IE and Netscape (especially the versions earlier than 4 and 5 of both) render table cells correctly unless there is an object in the cell. Sometimes the cell border is not drawn, or the size specification of the cell is ignored by the browser (which then in turn messes up the layout). So a single-pixel, transparent gif or a non-breaking space character can be put in the cell to make it behave. As a occasional HTML and web page designer, a single pixel gif is a good tool to have around.
In this particular case, it is easy to assume that something illicit is intended, but the presence of the <noscript> tag makes me think that it is an attempt to track what the ratio of JavaScript vs. non-JavaScript enabled browsers visit the page. This web page has had many more visitors and induced many people that may not have the latest and greatest stuff, whomever designed it is probably just trying to figure out what fancy whiz bang tools they can get away with.
Depending on their server set up they may be simply dumping the logs, or have several of the things in the site to generate specific information. (50 million numbers, times 1.2 for revisits, times the number of objects on the page, is one hell of a lot of bits in a log file.) They could have used different hostnames for images to host them on different physical machines, or whatever to break that up.
Note, that it is trivial to set up a virtual folder to point to a separate machine to do the same thing, without using a different hostname. So if it is a tool to link up phone numbers with IP addresses and email addresses (really that's all it would do) then they didn't put much effort into hiding it.
Has anybody thought of ASKING THEM why the thing is there?
I prefer Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is also the most likely one to be true.
http://www.defenselink.mil/nii/org/cio/doc
I had more respect to the Standard before this. Tracking users is a standard practice for any company managing a website for a third party. After all they have to prove that they are performing for the client. What I am wondering is if someone at the Standard got a kickback from this. I think people need to wake up and smell the marketing Propogranda. The telemarketing industries is in fear of their lives because of the Do Not Call List, and they havea history of dirty tricks to steal money from people. Slaming being on of the more shameles examples. They are certainly not above trying to spread false new stories to increase FUD. Just think about it.
That's your tax dollars at work.
It only goes to prove that GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT GET INVOLVED IN STUPID STUFF LIKE WHO CAN CALL WHO. Don't like telemarketers? Nobody likes them? Then run marketing campaigns all over the damn country that tell everyone to HANG UP when a telemarketer calls! If EVERYBODY hangs up WITHOUT listening to anything that telemarketers say on the phone, then guess what? THE TELEMARKETERS WON'T CALL ANYMORE, BECAUSE IT WOULD NO LONGER BE PROFITABLE ANYMORE!!!
var dcsADDR="g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net";
What's that doing in there?
There's also a link to Microsoft's Intellisense web site on the Government's Do Not Call page, but that looks like typical Microsoft dreck from their page generator. The "NetIQ" stuff was put there on purpose.
All this is totally unnecessary. The pages are so simple that all this stuff is doing nothing useful.
AT&T the phone company is NOT the same as their hosting company. They may both be affiliated, but they can do seperate business. Common people!