Slashdot Mirror
New Technique for Tracking Web Site Visitors
bigtallmofo writes "According to Jupiter Research, 58% of web surfers deleted cookies from their system in 2004. This has sent a loud message to marketers in regard to consumer's preference as to tracking their online activities. The marketers have responded with PIE. Persistent Identification Element (PIE) is a technology that uses Macromedia's Flash MX to track you even without using cookies. Macromedia has created a page to instruct users on how to disable this."
Somehow I doubt that 58% of users are actively going into their browser settings and deleting cookies themselves. This is most likely users are reinstalling their operating systems or using some spyware removing software that is removing their cookies. So I think that this PIE software will not help much. Trying to track visitors is an uphill battle.
Does firefox have a plugin that reminds me to either put clothes on or turn off my camera before loading a flash plugin?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
That ought to fix it.
if i had a girlfriend...
I can now stop time, but the effect is only temporary
"MMMMMMMmmmmmm.... PIE..."
... it's as easy as PIE.
Sorry.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
I still won't load plugins into my browser, even if they offer the feature of being able to track me better.
not to install flash. What good features did it have anyway?
I have the Register to thank for this as their story pages are unreadable with Flash enabled due to haveing THREE flaming animations running at a time.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
If it's being used for this then I guess I can finally take the plunge and get it off my machine completely. I guess I'll be missing all that "cool" stuff on "teh interweb" but I'm sure I'll survive.
I bet Macromedia is thinking the same thing.
Request: Can someone make a plugin for moxilla/firefox that blocks this? This would be somewhat akin to the flashblocker plugin that already exists (and is highly recommended).
first cookies then pies
sheesh what's next.. cake?
-SJ53
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Marketers won't be happy until there is a hovering monitor that follows you and is always in your face plugging you with advertisement. These guys are lower than ambulance chasing lawyers.
That Firefox flashblock is one of the best technologies ever. The idea is so simple, and should have been an option in the actual flash itself: the thing doesn't load unless you click on it and say so. Most things should be like that, or be able to be set like that, and it's annoying when a company wants to control your property in such a fashion.
I mean, I have flash to play the occasional game or watch a movie. That shouldn't make me susceptible to ads crapping all over my eyeballs.
More importantly, Macromedia should be on my side with this, unless they are somehow benefitting everytime a flash app is loaded (which isn't impossible, but creates a serious conflict of interest).
Over half of all web users' cookies? That would be enough cookies to feed the populations of Africa and India for, like, decades.
I'm putting my system on a low carb diet.
I dont mind if people see where I have been on the net cause like most /.'ers I only go two places /. and porn sites
Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, says the company is trying to help consumers by preventing them from deleting cookies that help website operators deliver better services.
gee, thanks mookie, i just wouldn't know what to believe on the internet if it weren't for all your protection. oh, and thanks for preventing me from deleting my own files. you're right, i really did want those after all. you're such a good friend.
*happy sigh*
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
I've noticed for a while that Flash, by default, denies access to your camera and microphone. I'm wondering however, why there is even a setting for this. Who in the right mind would allow random Flash applications access to their camera and microphone? What use would this have?
I keep telling people that Flash is evil, this just re-enforces my point.
As it is, Flash is:
1. Bandwidth hungry (Bad for the many people still on Dail Up)
2. Allows for the most annoying of Advertising gimmics
3. Disabled unfriendly, as screen readers for the blind can't read flash.
4. Google and most (all?) search engines don't do flash either.
and now:
5. Allows for privacy invasion.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
"The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works," Tanembaum said. "
My, that makes me feel better, knowing that the wise marketeer is looking out for my best interests.
Wait until you see ICE CREAM (Internet Collection Element - Cash Rules Everything Around Me) which uses sprinkles and crushed reeses pieces for tracking. Nobody seems to delete those.
the whole delete your cookies thing is silly. i run several web sites that use cookies to track logins, not for me to track them but for the site to track who is logged in. the browser sends the cookie to the site, and if the cookie's id matches the one stored in the database, the user is trusted. this is a fairly good way of identifying logins and if you delete your cookie you will simply be logged out. most sites use cookies this way and if you have a good browser, you can see what info is stored there anyway. i suggest opera because it has a good cookie manager that also integrates well with its password manager. if those numbers are correct, then 58% of internet users have been misled by some media outlet into believing that browser cookies are evil. that's not to say that some aren't used for marketing purposes, but really, if you think a site is trying to track all that info then find a better site. don't just randomly delete cookies, some web administrator put them there for a reason, and it's probably to help you use their site.
Anyone else afraid that maybe, just maybe, they know us better than we want to admit?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
to your point, however, some % of that 58% are likely deleting cookies when e.g. AdAware or Yahoo! antispy is telling them to clean up this "tracking info."
Regardless, it's a Good Thing users are doing this.
58% of web surfers deleted cookies
sure. jupiter. glad to see you guys are still spouting lots of bull crap to earn those consulting fees.
58%. Sure.
There was the embedded unique ID code in Pentium III chips.
There are cookies.
There are Persistent Identification Elements.
All long as you surf or use the net, you and your browsing can be tracked. A piece of advice that I give grandmas and people new to computers when I do the community workshops is that one should never do anything on the net that they wouldn't do in public.
Persoanlly, I am suprised that 58% of people delete cookies. I'd be suprised if 30% of the people on the net knew what a cookie was. Other than oreo. I wonder if that 58% inclued people that reinstall their OS when they get bogged down, Or maybe that one time they installed and ran Ad-Aware only when they heard of it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
And once word gets out to the normal world about this next 'great evil', how long will it take for a new tracking methond to be developed as a response?
There is 'too much money' out there for vendors not to develop these things. Here is an idea (flame if you must)....if you are so dead set on not having someone, somewhere knowing that you went shopping for dildos, then DON'T DO IT. If you do, do so under the assumption that your viewing/purchasing habits will be tracked, through one mechanism or another.
To aid your visitor tracking, here is today's log of my Slashdot visits:
Log on,
Letter
58% of users tossed their cookies last year? Eww...
Although I was initially shocked by reading this, I'm not too concerned because I already use FlashBlock Firefox extension.
From the site: "Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla and Firefox browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves a placeholder on the page that allows you to click to view the Flash content."
In most cases I've found this very handy, as ads on websites have recently been switching to a flash format (Yes, I could also be running the adblock extension).
For the few sites that I need it for (MBNA's Shop Safe Applet) I just click where the flash wanted to load, and it allows it.
I highly recommend this extension.
I now understand what those little flash icons trying to load in the corner of the browser were.
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
It's almost, but not quite, time for spyware removal programs to remove Flash as hostile code. It's probably time for programs like AdAware to offer the user the option of easily removing Flash. Perhaps with a message like this:
"Macromedia Flash is a program used primarily to deliver advertising messages. It can turn on your microphone and camera (if present) and transmit the results to advertisers, store personalized data on your machine and transmit it to advertisers, and play commercials with audio. Do you want to remove Macromedia Flash?"
Check out FlashBlock for FireFox. Not only should it prevent this whole PIE thing, it'll stop all MacroMedia ads from opening in your browser... unless you specifically want it to open.
Karma: NaN
n/t
From all the owners of computers I've serviced in the past, I'd say only around 5% knew roughly what a cookie was, with even fewer being able to give a good definition. But, a fair proportion had managed to remove cookies through using Ad-aware or Spybot.
PIE will ultimately fail, as programs such as Ad-Aware are created by paid profressionals with an extensive knowledge, aswell as being actively able to update and modify their products on a very regular basis.
Marketers however, cannot hope to acheive more than a failed gimmick as most firms simply can't concentrate heavily on creating software to monitor potential customers, let alone have the time or resources to continually update and refine it.
... I'm on dialup.
99% of the time I bail before Flash has time to load .
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
These do not run on my system unless I choose to let them run.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Then again, Gopher and WAIS kinda sucked at your soul, too.
Click here now to be a consumer whore! yikes.I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
but I can't seem to remember anything worth looking at that requires flash on the internet.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
I have uninstalled flash. When I see the little ``puzzle piece'', I know that I've found a site that isn't worth visiting, so Flash is a great time saver for me.
See what I've been reading.
friggen crap, macromedia's site is either slashdotted or extremely slow and it's the only way to disable this "feature"
Bullshit!
Deleting cookies is no problem because nothing should be stored on the client. Website logins should be session cookies, preferences should be stored server-side. If web developers don't understand this, they should stick to html.
Check out this nugget from the article
United Virtualities's PIE helps combat this consumer behavior by leveraging a feature in Flash MX called local shared objects.
"combat this customer behavior"? Is this how companies are viewing the general public?
I guess Weebl approves of this new PIE.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke"... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
The Jupiter results don't note a couple of obvious questions.
1) Of the 58%, are they really deleting cookies via the browser's "Delete Cookies" button, or are they blocking those sites. Is there a difference?
2) Of the cookies installed on those subject systems, how many were agreed to by the user? Let's assume that 10% of the cookies installed on the subject systems wasn't the result of spam, p0rn and spyware sites.
Do those numbers matter if the user doesn't care about the personalization as much as they are pissed that spyware and ad companies use your information against you? How many were from legit sites that the user was serious about re-visiting?
That 58% number is more probably a reflection of the amount of crap our browsers are loaded down with. The user would rather clean out the entire mess than sort out the couple that might matter to them. (remember, site personalization is supposed to be seamless, they might not notice the difference)
Infact I'm pretty certain the biggest pain a user is going to feel when dumping their cookies is those site's that cache your username/password in a local cookie, so you don't have to type everything in again.
Personally I prompt for all 1st and 3rd party cookies, then block the sites I see fit to. Most ad server farms use the same domain (ad1.adfarm.com, ad2.adfarm.com, etc...) so blocking them all in one cookie prompt is completely possible.
I don't see how people allow Flash. I stopped
when I found that they enabled the built-in
mike and webcams by default. Sure, they backed
off, but it's one strike and you're out!
Use SVG, not Flash.
have to delete cookies from old porn sites to make space so that i could visit new porn sites.
It totally ignores the browser setting that says "don't play sounds".
Since I do not read that Load Star Runner or whatever it is called comic strip, I have little use for flash animations.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
From the Macromedia website: "When Macromedia Flash content is being played, the settings you select for Flash Player are used in place of options you may have set in your browser."
Time to experiment with Firefox and see for sure if it blocks as expected..
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
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The way they force a flash install down my throat when I install Dreamweaver and give me no ability to uninstall it. Or the way the Dreamweaver exchange now requires flash, even though it works exactly that same as the plain old html-only version. Fuck macromedia and fuck flash. You want to exceed at open standards, I'm with you. You want to use your toolsets to leverage your proprietary crap, you might as well be Microsoft.
They're the only entry, using 1K. Deleted!
I'd bet that cookie removal most often results from the use of anti-spyware programs.
Flash "Shared Objects" are basically the same thing as cookies, though they're byte encoded.
To remove them you simply need to access the file system and delete *.sol files within the system's Flash Player directory. For instance, these are found at C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\ on XP.
Here's an app that'll let you read any SOL's on your system - http://www.sephiroth.it/python/solreader.php
My bet is that Flash Cookie removal will be a feature in the next releases of most popular anti-spyware apps.
Firefox flashblock extension. Enough said.
I mean, it's bad enough that some webmasters tie their menu functionality to the proprietary Flash protocol, making their sites almost impossible to navigate from certain platforms (regardless of browser) due to a lack of current plugins.
Now Flash being used to track people against their wishes.
What next? Flash-based worms?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Another good article on using flash for tracking:
i cleID=160400749
http://www.internetweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?art
It's interesting that someone figured out how flash could support e-commerce tracking tools. It would be far more interesting if someone actually implemented it. I doubt any company will seriously consider using flash to track. PIE's are too bleeding edge and there are too many potential problems.
Well, if you notice you're logged out, you just log in again. It's not really a problem. Cookies are sort of useful when they are used to remember my login at some random site (I choose not to use that, if possible -- I'm paranoid), but to keep you logged in?
... no. I'd say most are there to profile users so you have something to show to your advertisers. "Look, 50% of users stayed more than 15 minutes" kind of thing.
I don't really see what kind of sites you'd want to be constantly logged in to, where the benefit outweighs the risk of someone else using your computer can see things they shouldn't.
Besides, users should have the choice if they want cookies on their machines or not. If 58% of users choose not to have (all of) them then you're just out of touch with 58% of web users, I'd say. Sure, they might be misled, but so what?
As for the reason cookies are there in the first place
1) Create a "How do do your own breast examination" website using Macromedia Flash
2) Create paid-subscription-only amateur pics website
3) The best thing is you don't need a "???" step to profit. And the incoming part is tax-free, because the organization you create to teach teen girls to do their breast self-examination is not for profit...
I'm not sure about blocking it, but at least on Windows, the Flash local shared objects are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player and have a file extension of .sol. It is rather easy to delete them. Remote shared objects are a different story, but I don't see how these are really different than server side scripting tricks using sessions (eg, use a php script to serve up an image, and start a session).
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Let's see you got 1 and 1/2 out of your 4 points correct.
y /features/flash/
i ng+Flash&btnG=Google+Search
1) Bandwidth hungry.
Not always true. Think about Flash applications. One Flash movie load of 200K can replace a dozen or more page views at 100K each. So 200K vs. 1200K. Which is less?
2) Annoying advertising.
Yep!
3) Section 508 compliance.
You're not even close to right here. Flash does support section 508 compliance. It's just like any web technology, you have to take the time to do it. http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibilit
4) Google does index Flash
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Google+index
Conclusion. You don't know what you're talking about. I hope you get modded down now that these facts have been linked for you.
Oh, never mind....
What do you expect from the company that "invented" those multimedia, pop-up elements that take over the entire browser window (aka "Shoshkeles)?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
You know, just this morning I was thinking that it was a nice day for an arms race.
-Peter
I'm not interested in "targeted" advertising any more than I'm interested in the "plain" variety.
I'm pretty much against advertising for the most part, but I will say that I do like targeted advertising at times.
When reading specialty magazines, a good majority of the content of the magazine is about using goods and services that are advertised almost exclusively in that magazine or similar ones. Things like woodworking, computers, photography, etc. Now I will not buy something based on marketing hype alone. I usually do other research, reading, and ask other people about a product and then be pissed because the marketers got all the budget instead of the QA people, but that is another topic.
I just think that marketers have gone overboard in the past 10 to 15 years. You see, marketing can only do so much. If a product sucks or if quality control is low service, or anything negative in the long haul, no marketing can save that. Marketing has not created phrases like "No one gets fired for choosing IBM" or similar that I know you all have heard before.
A friend of mine asked me to consciously take into account how often I see "Bud" or "Bud lite" marketing stuff. Being that I spend a lot of time in bars and looking at the muted TVs and whatnot I will say. Damn. Bud is everywhere. Is it offensive? No. I don't think it is. I've seen NASCAR schedules and other rosters for sporting events that are informational and decorative which were paid for by Budweiser. I've noticed a guy with a Bud lite hat, I see their trucks all the time. Wow, they are a marketing machine. But the strange thing is that I didn't notice before I was told to notice.
Maybe more marketers should learn from this.
Marketing isn't the only reason for cookies to be used in a site. Referrals and affiliate programs swing largely on cookies; if you reccommend someone to a site, you get credit, discounts, or what have you.
While this might seem to be entirely unneccessary to many in the audience, there are a LOT of sites that use this system to generate traffic and grow their audience. Offering an incentive for people to tell their friends about a site pushes the viewers from "this is a pretty cool site" to "People I know might appreciate hearing about this site, and if there is something I get from it too, then what harm?"
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Really. We can all trust salesmen to know better what's best for us, as opposed to our own brains. After all, wasn't all progress thru tha ages initiated by salesmen? No thanks, Mookie.
Your highness, the peasants won't eat cookies?
What? They don't like cookies? Well, let them eat PIE!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'd like to see SVG gain ground but have doubts as to its viability. If you've ever tried to develop an SVG app, or reviewed some of what's out there, you quickly realize that these are going to be HUGE AND SLOW for anything more than very simple animation and interactions. A comparable Flash app is often 1/5th the size and capable of running multiple threads of media and interactions in real-time.
;)
flame away
In general, any widely used, complex browser add-on like Flash presents potential privacy problems. I wouldn't be surprised if Quicktime or the PDF plugin have similar issues.
Let's stick to open browser standards; those will be the best studied and best understood from a privacy and security point of view. Non-proprietary alternatives to Flash are around the corner.
I wish I all advertising was "targetted" so I could promptly register myself as a 113 year old hermaphrodite with no money. Ethnic group? Hittite. Hobbies? Collecting dried cicadas. If you can ever find a dried cicada commercial site, feel free to place an ad link to it on any page I visit. Convicted felon, too, with no voting rights (to avoid political spam as well). Then I could sit back and watch all the spam and popups roll in: all 0 of them.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Looks like you, for one, have welcomed your new flash overlords. Oh well, it thins the herd.
1. Get Firefox
2. Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies > Keep Cookies: > UNTIL I CLOSE FIREFOX
3. Never think about deleting cookies again.
----
Anyone find any problems with this setting?
That is, unless you're lazy.
you are a strong man indeed to be able to live without homestarrunner and albinoblacksheep!
If flash was used to really implement 1) as you purport I would agree, but 99% of the stuff out there is to add animation to the navigation (example : most official game site those day) and other gimmick, and frankly up until now, a dozen web page with a few picture isn't taking you 1200K as far as I know. Plain old html is the easiest to navigate, and read and load.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Anyone who mods me down for expressing this perfectly valid opinion needs to get out more.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
As web developer I agree with the bullshit call as well. Cookies are for sessions and should not sit around forever. In fact they should die at the time of a browser close or log out. No ifs, ands or buts. All those crappy apps that I log into, feh, they can get my settings when I log in again. Anything else is lazy programming with a capital z. Cant hack it? Go back to HTML.
I'm on carrier pigeons.
Kids today... nothing's ever good enough.
Every zealot should read it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Some websites are Flash-specific. I'll use MSIE for those and Firefox for the other 99.9%. I stopped using Flash when the ads for "Firefly" took over my browser when I was at Yahoo.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Good point. I guess it didn't occur to the original poster that it could also be some spyware removing software that is removing their cookies.
You doubt 58% are actively deleting cookies, but you think the same 58% are doing OS reinstalls? Dude...
i suppose its a good thing that they haven't released a 64-bit version of Flash yet!
Flash was once a rather nice delivery system for animated content. Then it became an advertising delivery system. Now it's becoming an adware/spyware vehicle.
Macromedia? Are you paying attention?
If you let this crap go on too long you're going to wreck your platform. People (a small fraction of them) are starting to think your stuff is a giant hole through which marketing zombies are driving Mac trucks. What happens to you when it's 15, 25 or 50%?
The page you provided is helpful; it also demonstrates the correct attitude. Unfortunately it is not enough. Not by a long shot. Here's a clue; if it could conceivably be used to monitor the user it needs to be OFF by DEFAULT. If ANYTHING the plug-in "knows" or "shares" is not ENTIRELY REMOVED simply by clearing the browser cache you are wrong, pure and simple.
Flash is not essential. Get on the stick or you're done in the market.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
And sessions are tracked using cookies.
Unless you prefer those &sessionid=AF8932B132432432784389523; urls
I am particularly thrilled with Mookie's quote, `The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works.' Not some users aren't -- no user is. Shame on you, Slashdotters who delete cookies! You're practically stealing from Mookie, and putting yourself in danger besides! Imagine if your favourite site could no longer address you by name!
It appears that if you want to stop tracking, you have to do it for every site you visit. So, I found an alternater method:
/dev/null ~/.macromedia
rm ~/.macromedia;ln -s
I don't find this comment particularly "Interesting." If someone calls your home, that should be opt-in. If you are visiting a site, the developer of that site has every right to track your page views while you're there, to show you advertisements while you're there, and even to use whatever information you may have provided when you registered to use the site, along with information derived from your pattern of usage, to show you advertisements that might be more relevant to your tastes. Revenue from such ads is probably how the site stays in business (if it is a for-profit organization). If you don't like that, you have every right to not go to such sites.
I don't understand the controversy over cookies. Unless you share a computer with someone you don't trust or are visiting sites you don't care to admit you visit, why even bother to delete them? What do I care if sites track my browsing activities? If you go to the bodega on the corner to do your shopping, the guy who works there has every right to track how often you visit, what you normally buy (so he can keep it in stock) and even to ask about your grandmother whom he happens to know was sick last week. He has every right to track his customers, whether formally or just mentally.
I don't really mind cookies on my computer. On the other hand, I do mind havng to re-type my username and password for subscription sights whenever I get jumpy and decide to delete all my cookies, "just in case." Cookies allow developers to do more useful things with a stateless medium. I'm surprised that 58% of users regularly delete them.
Since flash based sites are annoying for a variety of reasons (read about them in other posts) I've taken to using the mobile versions of websites. For instance Hollywood.com is a useful site for finding movie showtimes but it's heavily flash/shockwave based and very annoying to view. So I use their version for mobile devices which has the information I actually care about (movie locations and showtimes) without all the extra fluff. There's nothing preventing you from viewing these on a regular browser and they are MUCH faster. True, they don't have all the features of the regular sites but if you just need the basics they are great. These sites also will help those of people who constantly whine about how bloated everything is. (you know who you are...)
Some others include:
Amazon.com
American Airlines
Slashdot
Lose the zealot nature to your statements and they will carry much further. Read the article before you post and you won't look like a fool.
The article directly addresses the problem of Flash sites circumventing the use of cookies. Firefox is just as vulnerable to this intrusion as is IE and Opera and Netscape, etc, etc.
It is only a matter of time before exploits become more generic in nature, such as this. The days of platform targeting are going to start subsiding. This is much more 'worth the effort' as far as hacking goes becuase your target audience is so much larger. This won't be the last we see of platform inspecific system intrusions. (Yes I consider any information read or written from my machine, without my expressed consent an intrusion)
So not trying bash Firefox or anything but it's not the be all, end all of browsers. It can be difficult for novices as well since they visit sites that we (more tech-oriented people) don't, such as all the silly humor and greeting card sites that just rehash ancient jokes with images and music. I had a hell of a time getting Firefox to play background wav files on my mother's computer, something that was important to her no matter how silly I thought it was. It'd have been nice if I could have found an answer to this on Mozilla.org/Getfirefox.com but I wasn't able to. I finally figured it out from some developer questions on a forum asking how to get background wav files to play in Firefox/Mozilla. (The solution was installing Quicktime alternative and setting the mime type for Wav files to be associated with it. For some strange reason Firefox wants to use Quicktime to handle wav files. This was highly unintuitive, especially when Firefox would claim a required plugin wasn't available for a page and then say it was Quicktime (which was installed). It took a lot of looking at the source of pages before I realized that the background wav files were linked to Firefox saying Quicktime was needed but not installed on some pages. Some Google searches later I found the forum posts and it all finally made sense.)
All that said, I want to see Firefox improve and continue to challenge IE and take away market share. In the long run we're all going to be better off with the competition. Hell, eventually IE might even end up safe to run for regular users. (OK, probably not but it would be nice. :) )
This has sent a loud message to marketers in regard to consumer's preference as to tracking their online activities.
Bad assumption. This could just mean that people value their privacy. Most people don't even know what cookies are, but they do know that when they clear history, cookies, and everything else, then the next person who uses their computer to hit MSN or Yahoo or a variety of other sites won't accidentally be logged in using their cached credentials.
Also, you're forgetting about all the false positives that many corporate firewalls will generate.
This survey is hopelessly flawed. If you want to collect real data, you have to track how many times users actually go into their browser settings and manually clear the cookies, and you have to also ask them why they are doing it.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Throwing away cookies is often useless, especially with big sites/providers (Google, Yahoo, Msn, Ad-comps). If you dont either surf very little or visit only mainstream sites (like Slashdot ;)), you leave a specific trail in the DB, where simple statistics connects your new cookie to your old ones. The only way to avoid is to throw away cookies every week. Throwing them away every half year solves very little.
BTW: a login does the same thing easier. Different cookies, same login -> connected
Just wondering if any of the existing anti-spyware packages out there are wise to this and disable the flash setting as per the macromedia instructions... one would hope they would (or at least will in the near future).
"The marketers have responded with PIE."
Wait, since when do marketers speak Proto-Indo-European?
.... oh, wait, never mind.
I think it's time for SVG to replace flash for our vector animation needs. It can be lightweight (in it's gzipped form), and doesn't have delusions of grander about being an application development environment (which flash does rather poorly). It's nice to see that SVG is making head-ways in Linux (especially KDE) and the mobile market, but we need to get the word out to the general populace (or, at least, web developers).
End of Line
1) What happens if I dont want to view all the pages? I download 200kb of useless rubbish instead of 100kb of useless rubbish. (Assuming I look at the home page, decide it is not what I want then close it... besides 100kb is big for a homepage.)
2) OK
3&4) Only if the flash designer does it right, most dont.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Homestar. Runner.
DNA just wants to be free...
Like I doubt this is reinstall of OS especially that 39% of the user out there "delete" cookies monthly. This is in the next paragraph after this 58% quote.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've always felt it was a security breech (it's always toughest on the hole when it comes out sideways), and this is just another reason to hate it.
"If you are visiting a site, the developer of that site has every right to track your page views while you're there..."
You're not *there*. The developer isn't putting ads on his site, the developer is putting ads on your computer screen. More specifically, you tell your computer to send a request to a server for information. The server sends back information (often an html page) with references to other information: the advertisements and other images on the page. If you don't need or want to see the advertisements, why should you waste your own bandwidth sending more requests to the server and downloading ads?
As far as cookies go, at the "bodega on the corner" the "guy who works there" writes down *in his own records* when you came and what you bought. He doesn't give you a piece of paper and ask you to file it in your records and then bring it back to him next time you visit.
Never really understood why users dont like tracking cookies.
.. only the user ends up paying for our less accurate user tracking. I've been working in this industry for a long time, and I *hate* advertising. I honestly believe that cookie tracking does the user an immense favour by allowing us to keep the signal to noise ratio between user and ad traffic higher.
/. more for every impression or click. More optimized delivery = more money for publisher = less ads for you.
A few things happen if you dont have cookies, the most important being that we can still do pretty much everything we can do with a cookie, only with less accuracy (since the fallback is to track ads seen/clicked via your IP address):
- we can't implement frequency capping very well. this means you have a much higher chance of seeing the same damn ad, again and again and again. you like?
- we can't tie cookie data to private user data. I'm sure some people try to (although everyone involved, including the user, would have to jump through some pretty annoying hoopes, which is why advertisers dont even bother trying. Beyond the fact that such an act is against virtually every privacy policy in existance, the chances of this happening is slim to none. I don't buy the tin foil hat fears here.
- we can't send you to the right clickthru! I know we dont click on banners very often, but when you do, wouldn't you rather go to the correct clickthru rather than an the clickthru beloning to somebody else's impression who is behind the same firewall as you?
I hate advertising and spyware as much as the next guy, but ad network tracking cookies are harmless. Honestly, why are people scared of them? The more accurately we can report ROI to advertisers, the less annoying advertising becomes since advertisers are able to optmize their campaigns to ensure that they're not wasting impressions on folks who are less likely to care about them.
Is this simply a 'if they cant track me, maybe internet advertising will do away' thing? Because we can still track you, by IP
One thing for sure is that internet advertising isn't going away, and sites that you like (this one included) stand a much better chance of staying subscription-free if the advertiser pays
"Old man yells at systemd"
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/help02.html
I believe the above link applies to these settings. It wasn't obvious from Macromedia's website where to go for this.
You seem to be mistaken the quote very clearly states consumer behaviour not customer behaviour. Most companies have long ago stopped seeing you as anything other then an income source.
That's fine but nobody is saying which tab in here to clickn /flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/e
and what to turn off
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
If you don't need or want to see the advertisements, why should you waste your own bandwidth sending more requests to the server and downloading ads?
Because in most cases, the advertiser pays the "developer" each time you download that ad, which the developer can use to provide more content, which is the reason you went to the site in the first place.
As far as cookies go, at the "bodega on the corner" the "guy who works there" writes down *in his own records* when you came and what you bought. He doesn't give you a piece of paper and ask you to file it in your records and then bring it back to him next time you visit.
Many sites do the exact same thing as the bodega: they give you a cookie so it can recognize you when you come back. The guy at the bodega does it by remembering what you look like. The site does it by assigning you a number.
There's a Firefox plugin called CookieCuller that I find very convienent. Basically, it deletes all your cookies when you close the browser (or perhaps when you start it up.. either way). It will also allow you to see the current cookies easily and to set individual ones as "protected", meaning it won't touch these.
It's extremely useful, as it will allow you to keep some persistent cookies (like your slashdot login, for example) while auto-killing the rest of them. All you have to do is login to a site, open the CookieCuller window, then find that site and tell it to protect that site's cookies. Voila. Very easy and handy.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Woefully, this isn't why people use Flash. People use Flash because they want to ANIMATE, and animation is rarely a boon for the end-user."
l ens/lens.swf
b lackbody/blackbody.swf
i onary2.swf
r esources/mathematics/nns_itps/coordinates/num_itp_ coordinates_1_1.swf
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/PHET/simulations/
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/PHET/simulations/
http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jeather/maths/dict
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/teaching
Flash is only a few features short of being as dangerous as ActiveX, only in a cross-platform way. As long as Macromedia is on the consumer's side, it won't cross the line. As soon as they start getting revenue from other source than sales of Flash design products, new invasive feature will start creeping in. At first they will be relatively harmless. But as the revenue shifts more towards online entities, Macromedia will start to pay less attention to the potential side effects of their technology. They already have a near monopoly, conventional business logic says now is the time to cash in.
BTW, does everyone remember that Macromedia now recommends you download the Yahoo toolbar when getting the Flash Player? Whats next? Require it? Install it silently?
Voice your opinion to Macromedia and see where it goes. If they ignore us, watch out.
Interesting ActiveX parallel:
Microsoft allowed embedded ActiveX in browsers for one reason only, to keep their marketshare. They hoped that users would like the "rich experience" of ActiveX over standards-compliant web pages and then would stick with MS platforms to avoid losing their new toy.
Macromedia made Flash to create an new "rich experience" over standards-compliant web pages to gain and keep marketshare.
ActiveX worked out so well (sarcasm intended), what makes Flash so different?
Favorite piece of TFA:
... Well, he is CEO of this company, whatever the hell that is worth ...
"Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, says the company is trying to help consumers by preventing them from deleting cookies that help website operators deliver better services."
First of all, what the hell kind of name is Mookie? And when your last name is ALREADY 'Tanembaum' why would you pair that up with Mookie? To torture your kids? You sadistic bastards
Back to the subject at hand: I love how they are "helping" me by circumventing my own decision to keep my web viewing habits anonymous to certain sites. They make it sound like we're all addicted to heroin, and this is their version of a rehab clinic. People delete cookies for a reason. And that reason isn't to get high. I prefer to remain anonymous for a majority of the websites that I visit on a daily basis. If you want to persist my information across multiple sessions, then create an account system. If I want to use the extra features, to order something, or to post in discussions, then I'll log in. Otherwise, leave me the hell alone and just use normal cookies for tracking same-day or same-week visits.
Think about Flash applications. One Flash movie load of 200K can replace a dozen or more page views at 100K each. So 200K vs. 1200K. Which is less?
It's probably a tie, or pretty close to it.
On those dozen HTML pages, many elements such as graphics, stylesheets, and client-side scripting are going to be common across all of the pages. After they've been fetched once, they're going to be in the client's browser cache and won't have to be sent across the wire again.
Thus, the first page access will result in 100K going across the network. The second page may only be 30K of new traffic. Depending on how many pages the user needs to visit, HTML could be more or less pageweight.
Given the declining popularity of slow dialup connections, and all the other benefits of using HTML, I would say that if a site could be done equally well in either Flash or HTML except for pageweight, it should absolutely be done in HTML. Which isn't to say that there aren't instances where Flash is the better (or only) solution...
"Flash was once a rather nice delivery system for animated content. Then it became an advertising delivery system. Now it's becoming an adware/spyware vehicle.
It's almost, but not quite, time for spyware removal programs to remove Flash as hostile code. It's probably time for programs like AdAware to offer the user the option of easily removing Flash. Perhaps with a message like this: "
Nice to know that something like this will never happen with Open Standards
This has sent a loud message to marketers in regard to consumer's preference as to tracking their online activities.
So what people would like is NOT to be identified personally. And what do the marketing droids do? Think up of something else that does just that.
Sometimes I wonder if these people are really interested in the customer and are not secretly more followers of their employer.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
do a system wide search for .sol files, anything not attached to 'neverball' is probably a flash cookie.
/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/something I have to flush them occasionally to get around caching problems
I've been working for a compnay doing e-learning stuff, and as a result of people turning off standard cookies, the only remaining method of retaining persistence is through the flash 'cookie.'
We are not, (due to some cd based distribution, and various learning-management-system restrictions*) allowed to use server side technology at all. has anyone another alternative? I prefer to use as little flash as possible, but it does smooth over a lot of browser/dhtml incompatibilities
on OS X you can usually find all the flash cookies in
*this may not be a valid problem, but I just haven't gotten around to reading all the docs for the lms. It was/is technically SEP, and I prefer for the moment to leave it that way...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
"The most surefire way of tracking is with user logins."
I agree. If a site provides enough value I'll take the time to create an account (though I'll limit info not related to my login such as address, phone, etc). Slashdot makes it worthwhile having a login so I do it and they can use that info for their business. The same goes for places that have "wish lists" such as Amazon and REI that make it easy for me to keep lists of items I'm interested in but not ready to buy.
I'll make myself accessable if your website makes it worthwhile.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I second this. FlashBlock is INCREDIBLY useful extension, perhaps the single most useful extension for Firefox that there is (for the average user, who doesn't need web dev toolbar, dom inspector, or TBP).
Almost all flash is useless and highly annoying ads, or now tracking stuff. Its so easy to just click the giant Play button if you really want to see one particular flash, such as a flash based game or movie, and you can whitelist sites you trust and visit often too.
I don't see as much annoying Java, but Java applets should be included in Flashblock sometime as well, since they are typically as useless as Flash.
Morphing Software
"one should never do anything on the net that they wouldn't do in public."
You mean I've bean jerking off to asian anal porn in public for years now? Oh shit!
Really, then. He's doing something wrong besides "just running Windows".
For the IE Browser: Tools -> Manage Add-ons -> Flash Object -> Disable
It's your own choice whether you spend your bandwidth making some advertiser happy. It's your own choice how your computer interprets the data that it's sent. That's why we don't run the VBScript attachments in our e-mail... If someone comes to your door selling magazines to raise money (say to go to college... this is common enough), and you like the person and want to see that person succeed but you don't really have any interest in what he's selling, why should you buy a magazine? Why should you clutter your own home with some shit like Rolling Stone Magazine when you would never read it? He gets some small cut of the proceeds and most of the money goes to people you don't care about. If you want to help him, give him money directly or offer him a chance to do something for you that you actually want or need. If you think the site is worthwhile then donate some money to it. But don't feel that you have to support the web advertising model in the process.
I think you are missing the point with the bodega guy. He doesn't ask you to remember a number every time you come back. Stores like Sam's Club and Cosco do that, but that's explicitly opt-in: you have to sign up for a membership... I guess more and more supermarkets ask you to get a "preferred card" or whatnot to track you with (and then dangle savings in front of you). But the guy at the bodega remembers in HIS OWN BRAIN what you look like. If he asks you to keep a number, he can't hold you to storing it and keeping it around. You have every right to throw away the number when you get home.
Thanks. You're a real pal. Now I know why every single page I visit contains either a flash ad with William Shatner waving Doritos, or from a company with a service that stops basement floods.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Used properly Flash is first class when it comes to building Rich Internet Apps that do away with this whole 'Refresh' to change page state idea.
Javascript, XHTML, and CSS can of course do what Flash can do (considering Flash's ActionScript is based on the same ECMAScript), but we're only *now* starting to see good implementations of these technologies that really deliver good web applications thanks to Google maps.
Now with Actionscript 2.0 you have access to a language that's finally emerging as a solid OOP language, but with a VM (the Flash plugin) that craps over anything else when it comes to building client apps. I've quit Java dev for the joys and rewards of developing in Flash. I'm not one of those 'web developers' you love to hate who created the whole skip intro thing, I'm a slashdot-reading, programming geek who sees what an awesome tool Flash is to create astounding next-generation applications.
It never ceases to amaze me how blinkered this tech-aware community is when it comes to Flash. Any technology can be poorly implemented, but the days of horrible sliding text skip-intro multiple alpha-tween flash movies are long, long gone. But just to rile you up here's a *nice* piece of heavy flash work. It's a great promo for an ad agency, integrates audio, video, and has a real 'application' feel, so for those who still don't load frames or images you won't be happy with this: http://www.agencynet.com/
It's the year of Linux! To celebrate I have x free hotmail accounts to give away
You're not *there*. The developer isn't putting ads on his site, the developer is putting ads on your computer screen. More specifically, you tell your computer to send a request to a server for information. The server sends back information (often an html page) with references to other information: the advertisements and other images on the page.
There's ways to browse with those functions turned off. If you want to do that though, you're going to miss out on other content as well.
What is the issue anyways? I mean, it's one thing to have popup ads that are actually intrusive to the point where you can't do other things (like read an article), but ads embedded into a page? Ignore them if you don't want to see them. Hopefully at this point you can look at an ad without feeling the need to rush out and buy whatever's being advertised.
If you don't need or want to see the advertisements, why should you waste your own bandwidth sending more requests to the server and downloading ads?
Do you really expect to browse the internet and be frugal about bandwidth? If you're really concerned, you should just disconnect. Try running a port monitor, and see how many times other systems are trying to connect to your system and waste your bandwidth.
Speak before you think
I just realized that point #2 (we can't tie cookie data to private data) implies that we want to. What I meant to say is that while some fear that we can do this if you leave cookies on, those fears are unfounded.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Another thing to consider:
The browser-integration of that (relatively) recent feature of allowing cookies only for sessions and have same automatically deleted when you close the browser.
Yeah, you don't want it. Others do. Or rather, many others won't mind targetted ads. Wait, let me rephrase that. Many others will *fall* for targetted ads. Most of them will fall for any ads and any better way of advertising, like targetted ads, only help the advertisers. There are a lot of people who can't even differentiate between ads and normal content (like they can't differentiate between spam and normal mail).
Actually we just like screwing up the advertisers and making them waste their money. This isn't about us users desiring to be advertised to in an efficient and effective way. It's war against marketers. We hate you.
I'm pretty much against advertising for the most part, but I will say that I do like targeted advertising at times.
I also hate being tracked.
However I do like targetted ads when I want them. Google does this, and I like that. I get the ads which are pertinent to my search, as that is what I am interested in at the time I am doing the search. And, the ads are non-intrusive when I don't care.
And I DO go through my cookies (Mozilla) to selectively delete them, and I use the setting that blocks cookies from specific sites.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
That's why I use adblock.
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
The machine is trusted. You have no idea who is sitting behind that keyboard.
Cookies have madeit easy to get into someboies system, and they are not secure.
How are people suppose to know a site is tracking a user in a way they don't want to be tracked?
Most cookies are used for tracking, most people do not want to be tracked.
Cookies can be hijacked.
Web administers put them there becasue they are too stupid to do it without cookies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Which is a much saner way of fighting the machine. Go for it! If you don't want advertising, more power to ya!
"Old man yells at systemd"
.. Some of those hard-to-eradicate popups are caused by javascript calling flash.. Drudge Report does this...
nope what you say does not affect anyone in the corperation I work for.
all WEB internet traffic is filtered through privoxy.. therefore you can try to show any of us here the same ad over and over all you want. they do not get through and they do not get displayed.
we cut internet bandwidth use by almost 45% by adding a privoxy proxy in front of the corperate proxy.
if we block all your cookies and ad's it's extremely effective.
BTW, you cant track any of us in this company by IP. because it looks like there is one IP address that is surfing a whole crapload of places.
another nice side effect of ad filtering proxies.
I just wish that ISP's would offer a free privoxy proxy for it's users... an opt in for the customer to opt out of all the annoying web content and tracking.
So I can account for several thousand websurfers out there that you can not track and your ad's never get seen by. and I'm betting there are many many more than just the ones that work here.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Flashblock would be a lot more useful if it gave you the option to add the site to the whitelist from the button itself. Maybe by holding down the button or right-clicking it.
Right now it's not even smart enough to not block the SAME animation you just clicked to view if you reload or navigate to another page.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
- we can't implement frequency capping very well. this means you have a much higher chance of seeing the same damn ad, again and again and again. you like?
What ads? I have AdBlock.
- we can't send you to the right clickthru! I know we dont click on banners very often, but when you do, wouldn't you rather go to the correct clickthru rather than an the clickthru beloning to somebody else's impression who is behind the same firewall as you?
You don't need cookies for this. Just append a session ID to the URL or the POST data.
I'm going to side with the original poster here.
1) Bandwidth hungry.
Not always true. Think about Flash applications. One Flash movie load of 200K can replace a dozen or more page views at 100K each. So 200K vs. 1200K. Which is less?
What if I only want page #3? How would you know I want to see every page? I just checked the size of my organizations main page (That we consider way to large), it is 19K. WTF are you putting up that is 100K per page? So your point is "We are really bad web designers, and we assume you all have T3 lines for our developing pleasure, so here is 100K, per page". You sound like a classic Flash developer. After going overboard with "cool" shit that no one cares about using JS, you jump to Flash to put up even MORE shit no one cares about. It is a tool for the unskilled WebDev. I am sure it has some purpose, somewhere, and I am sure there are a lot of people skilled in using it properly, this does not include being the basis for your web site.
3) Section 508 compliance.
You're not even close to right here. Flash does support section 508 compliance. It's just like any web technology, you have to take the time to do it.
How many times have you EVER looked at accessible Flash code? Probably the exact same number of times you have read an accessible PDF document. Fact of the matter is, the core developers are weak, and never implement these features. If they are not supported natively, pointing to some deep dark secret, that no one uses, does not make it accessible.
4) Google does index Flash
Oh goody. Now even more useless search results, that I will skip over BECAUSE they are Flash. You may have the best content on earth, but if its in Flash, I will never see it. Of course it doesn't matter, web surfers realized a long time ago, that if you have content worth looking at, you will just present it to your users, if you have nothing of importance to say, you will wrap it in "gee whiz, that looks so cool" and hope for traffic.
My conclusion, you are a talentless WebDev, who hides useless content behind a really pretty "Flash" intro. I hope you get modded down as well, as people like you keep these terrible technologies alive.
>- we can't tie cookie data to private user data. >I'm sure some people try to (although everyone >involved, including the user, would have to jump >through some pretty annoying hoopes ...
This is just not true. The key issue here that most people are ignoring is email. If the email content is HTML then you can tie someones email to cookies. It requires no hoops or anthing like that. This by the way is one reason that the Thunderbird email client does not allow remote loading of content by default to prevent this privacy hole.
You mean rightclick -> allow flash from this site?
Morphing Software
TFA: "In addition, PIE, which can't be easily removed, can also act as a cookie backup, since it contains the same information."
TFA links to a MacroMedia site that tells you how *prevent* PIE infection, but how do you get rid of it if you are *already* infected? For that matter, how can you tell if you are infected?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Well I've already bypassed this new fanlged "PIE" crap by not installing Macromedias bloody Flash in the first place.
;)
Seriously what good at all is Flash ? All it's used for is yet more marketroid spam. Having a flash enabled browser is like inviting an obnoxious teenager to come in your house and yell at you.
So what do I miss not having it ? About 3 mildly entertaining "cartoon" like things (I've seen these on a co workers box and whilst they're quite amusing I don't see my life as being any poorer by not seeing them more often) It utterly amazes me that people will willingly run this crap.
Sorry but I'm old fashioned. The only thing I want from a website is some well crafted HTML/CSS, with some supporting plain "non animated" images, and at the most, some simple client side javascript for stuff like menus (and don't worry I'll be looking at your script first. If I can't see it, it ain't running) You can do what you want on your server but not in my broser.
History has told me that allowing anything else is a disaster waiting to happen (Active-X anyone ?)
But ultimately my message to advertisers etc. is simple. You're not using my resources to advertise at me, to track me, in fact to do anything. You're not welcome to phone me, send me junk mail, knock on my door or stop me in the street. Bother me with your crap and you'll get a simple reply "Fuck off and die".
There that told 'em
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Uh, this is only true if you are complete and utter idiots. Are you a complete and utter idiot? All you have to do is parse the clickthrough from the URL information and bingo, you can grab unique strings. If you are currently using a cookie to do that, you are stupid. There is much less overhead involved in just putting the link in the URL.
You, sir, are simply spreading bullshit to try to get people to not delete your stupid asinine spyware clickthrough crap. I both block advertising cookies when I can, and use adblock to block ads so I don't have to see them at all. Consequently, I can't click through, because I don't even see the ad. This all works out perfectly for me. Meanwhile you can blow your cookies out your ass.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Opera 8 Beta I use has a nice turn plugins on/off button which I put next the turn images on/off button. Admitedly these are global rather than per site, but in most cases flash is used in adverts so it doesn't trouble me having plugins turned off all the time.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
No, I do not like seeing the same ad again and again, but it doesn't happen. I don't look at ads. I have trained my peripheral vision to recognize ad space on a web site, and I deliberately avoid looking. A pop-under escaped my block-pop-up technology yesterday, and there it was sitting under my main window. So I positioned my mouse so that when I clicked the pop-under would become the primary window. I closed my eyes, clicked, and pressed the key combo to close that window. I then went back to reading what I was reading, having not the slightest idea which advertiser I had just ignored. I literally did not see the ad, not even peripherally.
Take note, advertisers: We do not want you around.
Take note, webmasters: We do not want to see ads.
Still feel the need to run ads? It's your choice, and I respect your choice. But I'll make my own choice at the same time and ignore your ads, and try hard not to even see them directly. Your choice, my choice.
You clearly need targeted V!agra and C!al!s ads.
"You may have the best content on earth, but if its in Flash, I will never see it."
Depriving yourself of what you're looking for because you have some wacky ideological thing with Flash. Kudos to you.
I have no such option in my rightclick menu with flashblock. I just installed the latest version from the site, 1.2.9. What are you using?
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Well, I'm the next guy, and it's pretty clear to me that you don't. Deleting cookies and avoiding ads has become kind of a sport for me. I clear 'em out as soon as I'm done with a site or very shortly thereafter; it takes about 2 seconds. You've got my (dynamic) IP address, and that's all you're going to get.
I understand your points, even if I don't agree with them all, except for this one:
we can't send you to the right clickthru!
Maybe the average banner ad system really is that stupid, but what's so hard about serving proper links to go with the ad content?
You make it sound like every banner click goes to exactly the same URL, and that destination only knows where to redirect you based on what the cookie says.
Like I said, maybe people are using that setup, but it's about as bad an idea as you could possibly think of.
This Like That - fun with words!
Perhaps the biggest source of apprehension about cookies, and probably the reason many anti-spyware tools and services filter them, comes from the practices of companies like doubleclick.
These companies can effectively spy on your use of the web (if not other internet services with web components), watching you travel from site to site and learning your browsing, and even purchasing habits (yes, doubleclick does offer this level of integration with ecommerce sites, much as coremetrics etc does, as a 3rd party analytics provider), since their advertisements are, as they like to claim, "everywhere."
The big conspiracy theory was that they would begin to correlate individual random unique ID's from within this massive database with actual people, by cooperating with major sites that both use doubleclick and register users. They could even mix in more traditional marketing databases, and that could give you can get a pretty nice, deep stare right through anyone's clothing, so to speak. I use that metaphor deliberately, because this kind of power is the equivalent of a sex fantasy to people in the business.
And of course what's the point of doing all this if you can't sell that data all over the countryside?
Yeah yeah, we were all paranoid nuts, pass the tinfoil, ha ha ha. Then they actually started doing it. They bought a major "traditional" consumer database firm and announced their plans to do exactly this. There was an uproar. All covered on slashdot, if I recall correctly.
For the layman: Cookies are designed with an important limitation: the cookie "namespace" is tightly bound to the domain from which the cookie was set. This is necessary for a variety of reasons. You don't want site A reading site B's data, for instance.
But a company like doubleclick has their servers hit directly from web pages all over the net. They can set a globally unique identifier cookie on their domain, and use it to track you as you hit pages on every other domain that includes a double click image. And of course they know where you hit their image from various data in the request; the "referer," querystring tagging, etc.
So, uh, you can "trust" doubleclick to do the right thing and not reveal what they know about your travels through the big messy public library we call the internet. But I suggest you "Trust No One," even when the giant faceless marketing company doesn't have unprecedented means, enormous motive, and unique opportunity.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
my Yahoo mail and CNN pages look like slashdot. no more red/ornage/green blinking on the top/left/bootom/right sided and in the middle.
flash flickers - nothing is nastrier than that. i can't imagine my life (Internet life) without Firefox.
Make ads cool and i will probably switch back and even click one or two. meanwhile - i know that online casinos exist and no, thank you, i am not looking for mortgage broker today
it makes our jobs on ecommerce sites a lot more difficult too. I went the route of having the session id in the url all the time which I hate doing.
I had an idea for a "secure" user tracking. I'd like to bounce it off slashdotters. What if the browser itself was responsible for sending a site a unique id. Then, it could create its own id based on the url. This would allow to program around 3rd party's like ads but still give the site you are visiting some method of tracking you. The browser could have settings for how long it sends the same id.
Does that make sense?
Easy solution here, too: either disable Flash (jeez, I HATE Flash ads), or use a free product like No! Flash, which blocks the damn things from starting. :) Very handy!
Instead of using cookies, bury an argument in the links. If you set up the site to be completely dynamic, including all the links, one of the arguments passed in can be an MD5 "hash" based off the login and password entered by the user, with a time limit (depending on the site, anywhere from a day to a few hours) - add the time limit into the hash, and when the limit passes, the hash is no longer valid. As long as each and every page on your site first calls a security check routine (which they all should), it can first check that the hash is there, that the user is registered as "logged in" (via a flag on the DB) - that the hash matches the login/password/time/etc, and that the originating IP address matches (could be made part of the hash, too). This link hash system isn't perfect, but it doesn't require cookies and it can't be "guessed" at. One of its larger drawbacks is the possibility of two people using the same login from different machines via a NAT'ed link (so it looks like the same IP for both)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
That option isn't available in 1.2.9. I see that they offer a newer version from the site, but not the extensions catalog. It doesn't uninstall cleanly, I might add. Uninstalling the plugin, incidentally, simply removes the display of all flash, and they want you to hand-edit your UserContent.css file.
It still wants you to restart your browser twice. No indication of this fact when you start up the first time. I wonder what other little surprises are lurking. As it is now, I wouldn't recommend this plugin to non-technical users.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
No affiliation, just a happy (registered) user.
I showed my father how to avoid Internet bullshit by installing Firefox. He likes it & has shown a couple of his friends how to do it - specifically said because Firefox unlike IE doesn't constantly bug you to install Flash with no way to forever turn it off, because "flash is nothing but ads." This from the same guy who once called them over to check out the purple gorilla bouncing all over his screen.
If you need any leverage to get them to install Firefox, tell them no more free service calls for spyware picked up from IE. Take it to Geek Squad, I just don't have time in the day to do everyone's spyware removals.
not to install flash..
Though its over (ab)use was enough for me.
Flash has been one of the banes of the internet as far as im concerned. Things that should be small and simple are made nearly unbarable by moron site builders and advertisers.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Flash would actually be more powerful than cookies, because it would share the same information between browsers. Browsers (IE, Firefox) typically have their own unique set of cookie data. Flash uses a single set of data for all browsers on a machine. So if you visit the Gadgetron (semi-fictional company) website using Firefox in the morning, and then return to the same site with IE, Flash will recognise you as the same customer. This works on Windows at least.
But don't tell marking folks that.
Wow. You're set in your ways.
f m?tabSection=leaderboard
I'd equate a talentless WebDev more with someone who doesn't understand that to advance and have talent it will involve learning and working with new technologies. A talentless WebDev would still make static HTML sites. A talented WebDev will be making database driven sites or applications. Luckily in 1999 I managed to move past static sites and since then I've worked on some great projects.
All your Flash rage is still based on animation and intros. I couldn't produce a worthwhile Flash animation if my life depended on it. I agree and think they're dated and add minimal value to every site.
I can on the otherhand produce some pretty nice Flash apps (as long as I have a design resource to make it cute). Here's a couple of links.
http://www.subaruprimalquest.com/race2003/index.c
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/store/
Now this is just one man's opinion, but I think both of those sites are way better with their Flash versions compared to the HTML versions. I'll let you make your own decision.
How to uninstall Flash player (Tech Note)
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/i
Direct Links
Flash 7
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/ts/flash
Flash 6
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/ts/unins
--- Eat my sig.
Apparently I am still using 1.2.6 and I DO have this option, and it works well.
Somewhere they broke support for nightlies, which is why I think I can't use 1.2.7+ or 1.3.x yet.
Morphing Software
Maybe you didn't read the above post. They arn't wasting their money; they're spending according to what they're getting. Less accurate/informative tracking = less money. So you're not making them waste their money by blocking cookies; most of the fallout of not tracking by cookies is borne by the user.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I agree that installation can be troublesome if you've had a previous version installed. Upgrading doesn't always work, and I have had the flash just completely disabled, but uninstalling flashblock, and removing the one line from the usercontent.css file, then restarting firefox and reinstalling the latest flashblock has always seemed to work for me.
I don't know why they must insert a line into the usercontent.css. Perhaps the extension abilities don't allow something that is crucial to extensions like flashblock working otherwise. I would like to see FF 1.1 fix this problem so flashblock can do whatever it needs to do to work right without the hassles caused by having to have an extension add lines to that file.
Morphing Software
Oh my. Where to begin.
.. go for it. I only meant to point out that relying on the deletion of cookies to thrawt advertisers is not a terribly effective tactic. Proxying out requests to ad servers and networks works wonderfully; but if we dont serve an ad to you, why the hell would we want to track you? To us, you wouldn't exist, which is fine by us and you.
> all WEB internet traffic is filtered through privoxy.. therefore you can try to show any of us here the same ad over and over all you want. they do not get through and they do not get displayed.
Where, in my parent post, did I say anything about blocking the actual ad requests? I have no problem with this, and if you do it, more power to you. I was talking STRICLY about cleaning cookies as a means of fighting advertisers.
> BTW, you cant track any of us in this company by IP. because it looks like there is one IP address that is surfing a whole crapload of places.
Again, my p[arent post goes to great lengths to point out that I know that, and when we cant use cookies, we use IP addresses, which are inherently less accurate for the very reason you repeat for me.
Its funny, the combative tone some of these replies take. I have no problem with anyone blocking ad servers via proxies
"Old man yells at systemd"
Now they replace the relatively unintrusive cookies by CODE RUNNING in our browsers!
Don't they get the message?
You mentioned frequency capping. What frequency capping? After seeing the stupid animated ad for mortgages (you know the one--it has little buttons for every state, in various configurations) or the stupid "click the moving object" ads for the thousanth time, I have no reason to trust advertisers to 'cap' the number of times I see an ad for any given product. I wouldn't mind seeing a few ads for a new product I'm not familiar with, but I'm sick of seeing ads for mortgate refinancing ten or twenty times a day every !*&(*& day. Advertisers seem to just want every consumer to see their ad as many times as possible, without limit. They have proven by their behavior that this is their goal. Why would we trust them when they claim that they need cookies to provide "frequency capping"? There must be some other motive behind it.
If advertisers don't shape up, we are all going to be using Adblock before long. I'm aware that advertising often pays for content, and I'm willing to see ads to have good content, but there are limits. If you make your ads annoying, intrusive, or privacy-violating they will be blocked. Maybe the amount of content on the web will decline, or maybe the existing ad companies will go bankrupt and will be replaced by ones that are more aware of what consumers want. The current trend cannot continue, however.
Do not underestimate the stupid side of the force.
Flash is unparseable. You can't select anything. You can't view properties. You can't copy the content. You can't take screen shots. You can't block images. You can't view it with lynx.
It's only useful as a lightweight animation medium. I have never seen a flash site that didn't suck, except homestarrunner.com
So, when they noticed people were deleting cookies (TFA probably explains how they found this out), they realized that this was a "mandate" from the consumers that they don't like being tracked with cookies. Their reponse? A new tracking mechanism! Brilliant. This reminds me of pop-unders and floating frames in response to people getting bent at X-10 pop-up ads.
Since the marketing weenies didn't really understand the message, I'll repeat it in plain english:
We block your ads because we don't want to buy your crap. We delete tracking cookies because we don't want to be tracked. Any attempt to overcome our efforts at [semi-]anonymous and ad-free browsing just pisses us off even more. We hate you. Die, die, die!
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
seeing the same damn ad, again and again and again just makes it that much easier to ignore.
to delete cookies to fix problems. when my dad couldn't get his bofa online account to work, the customer service rep told him to delete his cookies as well as the temporary internet files. and guess what, that did the trick!
HD Trailers
So this is what it's come to: we the consumers are officially enemy combatants?!?
OK then, fine. I can live with that.
But tell me one thing: can a businesses that hires a marketeer that treats their customers thus way live without my business, or say, the business of the 58% of Internet users that are apparently getting tired enough of this crap to actively seek out and delete cookies?
Didn't think so.
Business needs to realize that it is precisely because of this entitlement mentality that people are beginning to get pissed. Personal lives and habits are not a gift given automatically with the purchase of a six-pack. My $3.49 doesn't give you any right to compile a psychological shoppping profile. You want to know about my buying habits? Ask Me!!! Try to take it without my knowledge, or sneak it off my hard drive and I'll treat your business no better than I would a common thief: from an extreme distance, and fully armed.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I guess most people don't know that IE 5+ has a mechanism that allows any web page (even one in the restricted zone) to store at least 64KB of data on your local computer (1MB for most sites, and up to 10MB under the right conditions.)
r s/reference/behaviors/userdata.asp
They also probably don't realize the feature keeps working even if you disable cookies, and that clearing your cookies, your history or whatever else you can find in IE's options will NOT clear those chunks of data.
It's called the "userdata behavior".
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/behavio
Now just to balance things out, Netscape 4 had a feature that allowed any web site to save an unlimited amount of data on your local FS.
Anyway, moral of the story: IE is a bigger privacy concern than Flash, and FireFox is probably your friend.
Um.. I havne't had a *single* windows computer that I bought which I haven't had to do a reinstall at least once.
Heck, I usually can't go to someone's house to work on their comp without having to reinstall the os.
-=fshalor
No, it doesn't make sense. The problem is "user tracking".
If you were paying attention, you would know that most of us don't want to be tracked.
> 58% is a *lot* of OS re-installs ...
I dunno. If you're talking about windows, it sounds kind of low.
hawk, who got almost a week before XP had to be reinstalled
I couldn't get this to work. Do you need an older version of FF or something?
That's not how it works drinkypoo.
I work in the ad industry too, and although I don't like them, they pay for me, the writers who produce content, and everyone else running our barely profitable website.
This aint no freaking charity you mooch.
I consider the presence of cookies a form of TRESPASS. (See my other post in this discussion; it is LONG, and terse...)
However, ONE sure-fire way to burn PIE and throw it back in Untied Virulent's face is to surf from a boot CD or read-only file system.
Change you cookie destination to Root ownership, or devise and distribute a script that every 5 seconds scans the filesystem for session-related downloads and purges them, quarantines them, or edits them to make them unreliable, untrustworthy, or puts vulgar content into the cookie and PIE.
Now, that will likely raise issues and open a new can of worms. UV will likely say THEY own the cookies. IF they take that tack, they surely they must be aware they can be sued for trespass. Maybe they are trying to beat double-dick doubleclick at its own game. Maybe doubledick or other agencies own shares in these companies, but if not now, they may later.
If UV gets "smart" and tries to send the cookie crumbs and pie slices to paths outside of the surfing user's own home space, then that also could be considered a form of trespass, as they would likely have to violate system admin security policies which might be set up to force web content to a security proxy or to a root-controlled path on the users' disk.
What will double-dick and UV say when more people shift to diskless stations? Edit/crumble their cookies? Burn/toss their pie?
Time to counter-act this NOW, while it's early. Time to make better firewall, IDS, and editing tools to deliver a message loud and clear.
(No, I am not wearing a tin-foil hat. I am simply being malevolently and diametrically (but not yet diabolically) opposed to digital trespass once I've declared something to be trespass on my system
(Injects barium, sodium, lithium, titanium concoction...)
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Thanks for the insults! I think they really helped in making your point.
.. blocking them simply makes the user experience even WORSE.
One small problem tho. You're dead wrong if you're running an ad network. There are some very good business reasons for using cookies to tie the click to the impression, but I'd rather not enlighten you since you're not terribly interested in anything other than:
a) insulting me
b) noting that you block all ad requests, making your input to this discussion even LESS relevant (since the original discussion was about deleting cookies, not blocking ad requests.)
Man, I have no problem with anyone blocking ad requests. I'm sure you'd all love it if I got mad or thought that blocking ad requests was wrong, but hey, if you can do it, more power to you. I dont think your indebted to view advertising, although you clearly wish I did. My only point was that IF you view internet advertising, its in the end users' interest to use cookies
However, if you wanna take a stab at it, try and figure out why using cookies is better than parsing URLs. I'll give you some credibility if you can; otherwise, I'll assume you're a techy end user who is a little out of his industry element.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yes. It's less likely to distract me if I've seen it a hundred times before. It's also less likely to distract me if it's something I have no interest in.
It's called P3P -- Platform for Privacy Preferences.
A w3c standard not implemented in Mozilla but in IE since version 6, it allows you to reject cookies depending on how the end site will use and disperse your information.
Lower tier advertisers who are concentrating on reach (how many users see their ads) and branding (how often you see their ads) usually do not place frequency capping on their ads. However, higher paying campaigns (such as many of the ones running on the leader board at the top of /. for example) DO use frequency capping. One impression per hour or per 24 hours is a common cap.
Obviously, those mortgages people go for the 'throw as much shit as possible at the user and see what sticks.' But you can bet your behind that the MSNs, ThinkGeeks, Ebays of the world frequency cap their campaigns in order to limit the amount of 'wasted' impressions they pay for.
I dont blame you for not trusting advertisers. The bottom of the barrel in advertising do try anything they possibly can you get you; who cares if they annoy you in the process. However, top tier advertisers are actually quite meticulous about optimizing their campaigns through frequency capping, unique click counting, geographic targeting, and channel targeting.
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is what it's all about. Whether or not you think your business model should force us to conform to your security expectations, we are annoyed that someone should ever even hint that we are doing something wrong by removing files that we don't want from our own computers. Long sentence.
You're not doing anything wrong. :) I'm a long time slashdotter, left wing, privacy type guy. Nobody has to listen to me, but I do use FireFox, turn off ActiveX, regularly clean my cookie jar, etc.
:)
I just dont see the hubbub about cookies. I wasn't saying you shouldn't delete them, I was simply pointing out that there wasn't much of a point in doing so.
If you dont want advertising, block the requests/hosts! Deleting cookies simply isn't an effective way of keeping advertisers at bay. We don't expect users to have cookies (most ad servers will do an intial cookie check to see if you do) - its just that, IF were going to serve you, and IF you're going to accept the request, cookies really make life easier for the end user.
I dont expect people to believe me, but thats my 2 cents as a vet in this industry and an open source, left wing, privacy minded developer. Don't want advertising? Use ad block!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Bad HTML there. http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
What I want to know is how to detect web-sites that are using PIE -- so that I can punish them!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So which one do I really want to be changing?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's a global option for that. Just select the "always deny" option.
6. Flash is proprietary
It's evil that I should be forced to rely on proprietary closed-source software in order to view it, and it's also evil that there's no way to create it without paying for a program to do so. Above all, it's evil that something non-Free (as in GNU) could ever be considered a "standard" to the point where some websites require it.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I haven't seen ads in a very long time. The ad blocking in my browser, and the ad-busting hosts file from everythingisnt.com combine forces to destroy ads. The message here is that users don't like banner ads, not that we're scared of them.
> You make it sound like every banner click goes to exactly the same URL, and that destination only knows where to redirect you based on what the cookie says.
Thats exactly what I'm saying. On ad networks prone to account fraud, you have to set up some hoops to prevent accounts from inflating their own stats. Obviously, its more work, but thats how its done.
To say NOTHING of conversion tracking. Do you work in the industry or are you just explaining the simplest way of counting a user and redirecting them to an ultimate URL?
"Old man yells at systemd"
WTF? What about sites that don't require login but use cookies to store preferences...like, say, GOOGLE.
If I had to turn "safe search" off every damn time I used google I'd be pretty irritated. What does this have to do with "lazy programming"?
I personally haven't given a crap about cookies since they were first misunderstood ten years ago. I just don't have the time or patience to try to hide from these garbage companies keeping track of which garbage affiliate sites I happen to visit.
As for "naugty" cookies from the, ahem, questionable sites I may visit from time to time - well, spybot and such programs sweep most of em out and I'm comfortable with that. I am aware though that browsing is a bit of a two way street, and I'm not terribly concerned about anonimity when I'm intentionally browsing public websites.
Browser flaws that lead to hijacking and things of such nature are completely beside the point. Security flaws pop up everywhere, even in such basic tasks as image rendering. They're annoying and need to be fixed promptly, but they don't negate the technology.
yeah 58% is a lot of OS re-installs. it may be true that the much hated marketing people get thier information from websites, and try to assess the person and his/ her habits. but like, do at least a chunk of them know actually that its been happening to them? i seriously doubt that. the moment they know that they would want to use stuff like adaware, antispy stuff, delete cookies, and twice take a bath :) and search for a thing called firefox that uses adblock.
i bet, this is what happened and people have apparently pinched themselves into reality. doesnt it say a lot more than cookies ? it might be a social under current, which has AT THE VERY LEAST caught my attention. its all those "average joes and janes" who are fed up with the lack of privacy. remember the google controversy - where the email would be scanned for ad placement- although automated. its a sign that people are waking up!
I hope you'll lose your Flash developer job soon, so can't infect the web with your stupid and pointless crap.
Sorry, not buying it. More money for publisher means more ads for publisher, not fewer. The business of business is making money. In other words, "if it works, milk it."
I also fail to see why a properly tagged URL in a banner wouldn't be identified with the advertisement I clicked on, and why cookies would be required to establish that relationship. Unless the viewee has referral-stealing malware installed on his machine, I don't understand this piece of your argument. Or is that exactly what you're trying to accomplish here, to tie the referrer to the ad so proper credit can be generated, even in the presence of said malware?
Regarding the tying of personal user identification to cookies, isn't that exactly what the buyout by doubleclick of (crap, memory failing, but there was a company with a huge personal database that doubleclick was trying to buy about two years ago.) Sigh, the ravages of age.
Anyway, the personalization of ads really doesn't affect me. Like virtually every human I know, I tune out the nonrelevant bits of the page. I've become mostly immune to advertising -- at least I like to think I have. Therefore, I have no vested interest in preventing repeat ads or permitting "targeted" ads, because a tampon advertisement is equally likely to catch my eye as an 802.11g wireless card advertisement (that is to say, none whatsoever.)
One thing I find incredibly distracting is motion. Because of the increasing use of Flash for advertising, I'm now running flashblock, and refuse to view any flash unless I know what it's planning to do. I have blocked popups and popunders for years. Similarly, I've had to disable DHTML. Pretty soon I'm going to be back to lynx, and the only thing I'll have to deal with is BLINK tags and ASCIImation alt tags. :-)
On the whole, I am not opposed to advertising on the pages I frequent, which is why I don't blanket block all ads. If page impressions help the site operators keep their sites running, good for them. But they have to understand that (except in very special cases where I intend to give them a clickthru as a bonus) I will not click their ads, nor will I buy from their advertisers. I much prefer a subscription model, which is why I pay for Slashdot.
John
There is nothing wrong with flash. The use of it is wrong. From animation and multimedia tool it morphed in to ad delivery tool. That is why my privoxy blocks any trace of flash and activex. If website has flash on it and no html, I turn to the other website. That is why in 6 years working for SONY, I visited their main site only few times. If advertizers think they can bombard me with ads online, they have another thing coming. This is my turf, my computer and I am in control. This is not a TV and even there they are loosing battle with PVR.
Maybe now not many people are using ad blockers but this number will increase. I think it is a lost war for advertisers
those cute yellow stars weren`t meant to identify jews... nooooooooooo, it was just the germans way of saying we like you...
This has got to be one of the greatest tips I ever got from slashdot...I have been looking for modifying these settings, but never found out how to do this. This Macromedia page is now bookmarked. Thanks a lot!
Axe me while I slumber
Actually, I had the same question. And while I certainly appreciate your frustration with people who insist on being jackasses when they reply, I'm going to ask you why you use cookies for things like that.
I saw your post below about trying to prevent sites from inflating their stats, but I can't think of anything that you'd be able to do with cookies which you couldn't do with some combination of a randomly generated URL and maybe IP address.
great... another think to worry about.. i love how they keep doing this....
http://welcome.to/crazychris Updated daily!
> Sorry, not buying it. More money for publisher means more ads for publisher, not fewer. The business of business is making money. In other words, "if it works, milk it."
.. ie, adult ads, casino ads, shakey ads, flash ads, 'windows dialog' ads, etc.
Not true. If this were true, you would get a popup on every page you visit. Trust me, there is inventory on every site you visit that goes unsold to keep a proper balance between earning money and not alientating the sites' users.
> I've become mostly immune to advertising
Pretty hard to prove or refute this, but I will point out that there are tons of studies that point out the more subconcious effects of advertising, etc.
> Or is that exactly what you're trying to accomplish here, to tie the referrer to the ad so proper credit can be generated, even in the presence of said malware?
Yes, it is primarily used to prevent fraud and make the barrier to entry higher for defrauding tracking systems. There are a few other reasons to use cookies tho (such as tracking conversions which may happen many requests away from the click.)
> Regarding the tying of personal user identification to cookies, isn't that exactly what the buyout by doubleclick of (crap, memory failing, but there was a company with a huge personal database that doubleclick was trying to buy about two years ago.) Sigh, the ravages of age.
I remember what you're talking about, but my recollection here is that doubleclick was quickly spanked. There was a definate PR backlash.
> One thing I find incredibly distracting is motion.
No argument here. Most publisher networks allow publishers to filter out banner 'types' from their tag rotation
Hey, you definately win the most level headed and logical reply to my parent post. I can't believe how many people intepreted that as an opportunity to 'nyah, nyah, I use AdBlock.'
If we dont show you an ad, we dont need to track/count you. Its a non issue. You wanna block ads, go for it. (Hell, you can even opt out of cookies on each ad network if you like.)
But if you are seeing ads, its my informed opinion that it really is in the users' interests not to wipe ad cookies.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I'm perfectly happy with you deleting the cookies I send you after you're done browsing. It's the idiots that have them turned off completely that bother me.
After all, there really isn't another way to implement a shopping cart. And no, an ID in the URL is the same as a cookie that exists only for the current session.
One could as well block Flash altogether, except when you need it. Very convenient.
I dont blame you for not trusting advertisers. The bottom of the barrel in advertising do try anything they possibly can you get you; who cares if they annoy you in the process. However, top tier advertisers are actually quite meticulous about optimizing their campaigns through frequency capping, unique click counting, geographic targeting, and channel targeting.
From the recipent's point of view, the bottom tier, as you put it, is only irritating and frustrating. They can be tuned out, either mentally or actually. However, the top tier with their targeted aspects, click counting, and tracking are intrusive and insulting. Can the marketing business find a happy medium where they can get useful information without making potential customers feel like lab rats or ant's in a ant farm?
I would actually be interested in hearing how you propose that end users would even KNOW they were receiving targeted advertising?
... I can't see how users would want this.
You can receive targeted advertising without the need for a cookie. What differentiates non targeted vs targeted? Would you feel better if you got ads that you had no interest in at all? I mean, what if we could target *away* from users
"Old man yells at systemd"
the two big ones:
- advertisers are interested in actions which may occur many requests after the click
- using cookies just makes it harder to game the system. its not impossible, it just requires more technical knowledge.
- the cookie allows us to use generic clickthru tags which makes it less likely that users will get the idea to ticker with the URL parameters
- as noted above, the cookie allows us to implement frequency tracking. despite the fact that people dont believe in such a thing (see some of the other posts) I can assure you that middle to top tier advertisers almost always use frequency capping to prevent user burnout.
"Old man yells at systemd"
So sure, Flash is great at what it does, but what's been done with it so far is near-universally crap, and I'd like none of it, thanks. iamgunby
"Your browser (Opera) is not supported by macromedia.com. For the best possible experience, please use the latest version of one of the following browsers:"
Fucking brilliant, they'll be telling me to change my resolution next.
Because you are the moments that you and i have 0 issues if it is aimed in the extent of my very best intentions.
You are a stupid bloody moron with no money. Because you are a group of three species of bird only found in latex... Something else too, i forgte what it is previously frozen, but certain fish and scallops are a group of primates closely related to the multi-level security policy of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, "it is done" and there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a good reason to live in a chemical reaction. Awww, geee, it's on the spur of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, "it is done" and there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a greek philosopher. I think i've worked it out! You are the final sense, a theft from those who feel.
Yes it is! You are the moments that you and i have 0 issues if it is the opening at the blatantly stupid names?
Go to this page:
n /flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/e
Go through each of the tabs on the Settings Manager and select the most privacy friendly options available.
1. Point your browser to Macromedia's Global Storage Settings Panel.
2. Drag the slider to "None". The setting seems to take effect immediately.
3. Click the last tab on the right, a picture of a folder with a green arrow pointing in.
4. Any sites that have already stored data locally will show a value in the "used" column. I had a few suspicious entries in mine which were instantly cleared by clicking "delete all".
Ya, those were great. Your Subaru link took forever to load, on a HUGE bandwidth pipe. Oh, and Flash had to request another MEG of memory to do it. Did it look better than the HTML version. Sure. Is your Flash version more useable than your HTMl version? Not to me it isn't. I need hovering menus like the Saudis need sand. In your HTML version (still way to friken slow, good job with the dynamic aproach), I found the info I wanted faster. I think a bit of work on your HTML would make it a better comparison. Let me guess, you did it in Flash first, then were forced to put up a second version, because someone realised you were segmenting your users? Right? And let me guess, you spent 90% of your time on your Flash version, and hacked together the HTML version "because the boss said so". How close am I?
I checked your next link too, it also took forever to load. I mean, WTF, did we switch to dial-up slow. Now, if the link had been to anything OTHER than MacroMedia, I would say "Ya, well just another slow assed bloated site with nothing to say". However, since it is the Vendors home page, it screams "OMFG what a waste". I would guess that if ANY site could do Flash properly (clean, fast, looks great), it would be them. What this tells me is "The people who developed this crap can't make a decent go of it, I guess this is as good as it gets, shame".
So, all you did was prove my point. People use Flash to make things pretty, when they can't do it in HTML (note: I didn't say "not possible", I said "they can't do it"). Or they use it to make boring things "exciting". All I want is the information. What checkpoint is team 11 at now, I don't give a fuck what color you use to represent it, I don't need hovering ALT info, I just want the details. Team number, name, place, progess. Thats it. How did Flash "enhance" my experience? It didn't. In fact it caused two seprate prompts (one to allow Flash to run, and one when it needed more memory), that should never have been required. I guess if that is "better" for the sites you work on, great for you. If you did that in my shop, you would be gone. Why? Because we are trying to get our users to the data they want, in the shortest path possible, with the least amount of HCI. We want no more than three clicks to the data. I used two of them getting your supplied link to LOAD, so that would be at least three clicks to be able to even request info.
Don't take me wrong, I am all for inovation. I have no problem with dynamic pages (as long as it is FAST, EFFICIENT, and STABLE), or pretty. But, if I want pretty, slow, delivery, I would ask for paper.
Yes, most of my negative thoughts about Flash, are about intros, ads, and other crap. The problem is, that is what MOST Flash developers do with them.
I love Subarus, and would likely check out the link you posted based on interest alone. With the default to Flash, you would never get my traffic. I have to use it at work, so I can see what our developers are doing with it (mostly making terrible intro's).
Oh, I have WebDevs here that could make your HTML hack version of the Subaru site, look better than your Flash version, using less than half of your memory footprint. The talent is in the proper design and presentation of data, not in writing your db connections.
Don't take it personally, I am not going at you for your WebDev skills, your Flash stuff does look good. People are paying you to do what you do, so it is obviously what they want. I doubt I could do better. But as a USER (read : Customer), I hate it. It is slow, requires another bunch of junk to be installed. If it was a comercial site, you lose my traffic, just because of delivery method. You might have the best product on earth, but if it says "click here to install Flash, required to view site", forget it.
Again, it is not a case of "set in my ways", it is a case of "right tool for the job". For most of what it gets used for, Flash ain't it.
To this day, I have no idea why people actually want to use Flash. Flash was one of my primary reasons why I moved to firefox. If I disable Activex, IE gives that annoying mesagebox everything a page has a flash object.
Sirslud is right, why do people care so much about corporations trying to make your online experience better. And for Lumpy who uses Privoxy and anyone else who tries to filter ads, who do you think pays for the sites you are looking at? You're basically reducing the revenue of the sites you like so much. Why would you want to do that?
Maybe the content sites should filter people that are filtering ads so that you can't look at their content, that seems like a fair trade off.
I agree. But in the static community of the internet it isn't as functional. When I get my woodworking magazine, the publisher knows that the person there wasn't expecting Maxim, where on the internet, this is impossible. Also, targeted marketing is often just wrong, when I read /., and get a server company's ad on top, I have to laugh, it might be good for 50% of /., but for the rest it is laugable.
Also, I figure it is within my rights to block EVERY ad I come across, except the unobtrusive Google type ones. Revenge for those bastards trying to steal mindshare in the real world (yes, because of advertising, I no longer even watch TV), and for slowly morphing out culture into a bunch of easily manipulated sheeple. If some poor developer is stapped for cash, let him ask for donations, or actually provide a service that we can voluntarily support. Don't FORCE us to support you.
Often I pass through webpages, think their crap, and move on. Now why should I be forced to let them get money for their crap?
In the end I am completely against all forms of adversiment. Let the product speak for itself, and not let some idiotic form of brainwashing make our society ugly, flashy, inefficient, and stupid. If your product can't sell on it's own, then it shouldn't sell, and you should go out of buisness, or design something that someone actually WANTS.
Sorry, one of those days.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
So you're the guy who uses Opera.
most of the fallout of not tracking by cookies is borne by the user.M/u
So it's our choice and we're making it.
Now whether you like it or not I WILL stop you from spewing your damn graffiti onto my hard drive. If you want to keep precious IP tracking data on your drive then that's up to you. I won't let door to door salesmen make chalk marks on the side of my house for later reference either. Why do you find this so hard to understand?
You've got some good input there about the end result. But it was a swing and a miss for the planning stage. We were always planning a complimentary HTML version of the leaderboard from day one of development. The Flash did take longer, but seriously, an HTML display like that is built with a couple of looping tags.
And since you haven't actually used the site, you don't know that the leaderboard is just a piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to know what checkpoint team 11 was at, you'd probably go to the team 11 page. That'd be the fastest method. If you really liked team 11, you'd add them to your 'My favorite teams' page. So you'd find their info even faster. I'd work on making it faster but I've already moved on from that project, so I've done all that I can.
On the Macromedia site, compare the use of the Flash shopping cart to a HTML shopping cart. The lack of page reloads makes the system easier to use. Only the relevant parts of the screen/app are changing on clicks. Vendors find better conversion rates with systems like this compared to identical HTML systems. Which means more money for the vendor. Vendors sure do love their money!
That's it. Thanks.
I didn't say using cookies might not be better for your customers (the advertisers) but you said [implied, I guess] that it was the ONLY way to handle click-throughs, which is either stupid or a lie. Either way you deserve nothing more than my contempt, and that is doubly true since you work in advertising and are officially Part Of The Problem(tm).
P.S. "your indebted" -> "you're indebted". And you accuse me of making MYself look stupid? Obviously you're not new here, so wtf?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's because Avant etc. aren't non-IE and are still subject to many of the same holes. Shame no-one thinks of Opera though.
I am trolling
And then having created these "hoops" you announce that it's the user's problem that your ad's won't actually work much of the time. You choose to use a system that relies on cookies that you know will get blocked or deleted. If you care about actually getting your URL's to work then this is your problem.
Yeah, I don't understand the name calling, swearing, etc., other than perhaps to recognize the frustruation people have with the current onslaught of advertising. You were merely honest enough to identify yourself (which I also appreciate.) That's not deserving of scorn.
But I'm still not convinced of the value of tracking cookies for those of us who deliberately have no intention of clicking the ads. The perceived harm (real or imagined) of the tying together of surfing habits from site to site seems justification enough to deny them.
"Depersonalization" may actually work to my advantage: if I don't have an established or recognizable profile, you might be less likely to serve up the ad for something I might really like, but would probably be foolish to spend my money on. (Virtually every Thinkgeek ad comes to mind here :-) Thus, I save my money (to my advantage) by avoiding a sale to Thinkgeek (to the advertiser's and OSDN's disadvantage.)
The doubleclick deal (even though it fell through due to bad PR) among other things, has painted your industry with a broad brush. Like it or not, the entire web advertising industry is regarded in the same light as WhenU, Gator, Claria, and all those other spyware/adware purveyors. Even if your company tries to act ethically, it's virtually impossible for us consumers to see that. It's like the old lawyer joke: it's only 99% of them that give lawyers their bad reputation.
If web advertising is going to work for an honest advertiser, I think you guys are going to have to start by doing a better job of selling your industry as ethical. Doubleclick tried to with their opt-out cookie and their privacy policy, but that goodwill evaporated with their merger announcement (for example: even though it failed, it's all I remember about DoubleClick.) Claria, Gator and other spyware companies have been loudly complaining to the anti-spyware communitiy that they are not "spy"ware, but "ad"ware -- a distinction completely lost on virtually everyone who runs a spyware cleaner. So even the ad biz isn't currently doing a good job of polishing their images. I think you guys need a trade council with published ethical standards, and something like a tiny but catchy "trust me" icon on either your banner ads or some other integrity/self-promotion in your ad rotation.
John
If you use Firefox, just install the FlashBlock extension. It blocks all Flash items, and replaces them with a nice (non-animated, non-annoying) little icon. If you actually WANT to see the Flash content, one click on the icon will display it.
On my Winders box, I trace every adbanner, and add it to my HOSTS file. IP = 127.0.0.1.
"Deleting cookies throws this all out of whack and makes it difficult for web sites to know what their readers really want. Of course, there are other ways for sites to track visitors, but it's difficult to do across multiple sessions (repeat visits) without cookies."
The Deming model fits both cars and websites. We wouldn't want to deliberately sabatoge the building of a better car. Why do we feel it's a good thing to sabatoge the building of a better website?
There does exist the IAB (there are a few policy papers there,) but the industry has yet to really formalize a code of strict ethics. I hear you loud and clear. I don't really think the IAB is the solution - it appears too much like a vested industry shrill to me.
I guess I can ratify my involvement with the industry knowing that I AM picky about what happens on my computer, and that I DONT condone sneaky or unethical behaviour in order to increase marketshare. If I wasn't working my job, you wouldn't want some apolitical automaton working my job. Without saying too much, I'm glad I'm here, because I get to directly influence the direction of a technology I think has wide potential for abuse.
I will note, however, that Microsoft has done a wonderful job of allowing marketers and advertisers to walk over their machines. Cookies is nothing when you consider the adware and spyware crap that actually RUNs on your computer and silently transmits information to who knows where. You point out that it is the Gators and such that really ruin it, and I couldn't agree more. Net advertising has earned a very poor reputation in part its so easy to abuse an advertising users' computer.
And in case I'm implying this, I'm not anybody important. I'm just a lone developer working in a very fascinating industry. I find seperating the moral code from the source code to be one helluva cool problem.
"Old man yells at systemd"
You make it sound like every banner click goes to exactly the same URL, and that destination only knows where to redirect you based on what the cookie says.
That is the case 99% of the time.
How do you suppose static html pages rotate banner code?
By using cookies. The banner code can literally look like <a href="bannerserver/position1"><img src="bannerserver/position1.gif"></a>
and can be stuck anywhere. Then the banner server dynamically serves up different images and uses cookies to keep track of what image it sent to who.
The only other solution is to put a hunk of javascript there, or to make every page dynamic. Both of which are serious wastes of resources... and even worse for you..
If we're going to overhaul our site to make every page dynamic just for banner purposes, it's not only going to slow things down, but it's also going to allow us to serve up multimedia banners.. like movies and flash!
You think this is all marketing is? This, my friend, is one very small subfield of marketing called 'advertising'.
Good marketing starts, not from the basis of "We have this crap, now let's find some idiots to sell it to" but:
Each of these steps takes customer information - either aggregated (many consumer goods companies use panel data) or individualised. Without it, companies are back to "produce random shit, find suckers to sell it to."
I've seen marketing systems designed to analyse banking behaviour, and spot when customers are unhappy and on the point of leaving - the customer having a need that the bank wasn't filling (as well as ANOther bank down the road, say). And either suggest "If we did X rather than Y, we'd be more likely to meet their needs" or alternatively "We need to be able to do X to meet their needs". Isn't this a good thing? A company that recognises that it's not helping you the way you'd like, and comes back with the most useful thing for you?
Good marketing is near invisible - the adverts you see are just the tip of the iceberg, designed to give people that last wee push or reminder. And 99% of superbowl ads are wasted money anyway.
Not every marketeer is a good one, but the ones who do best are, and know this inside out.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
"A few things happen if you dont have cookies, the most important being that we can still do pretty much everything we can do with a cookie, only with less accuracy (since the fallback is to track ads seen/clicked via your IP address):"
/. more for every impression or click. More optimized delivery = more money for publisher = less ads for you."
- only the first time I visit a site, after the first load of the page I'll have all the ad-images, iframes containing ads, flash ads, url's of ad-servers I find referenced on the page, urls for javascripts used for tracking or ad related javascripts etc etc blocked via Firefox's very nice adblock extension. You only get info via those sources from me once.
"- we can't implement frequency capping very well. this means you have a much higher chance of seeing the same damn ad, again and again and again. you like?"
- Again, adblock nicely prevents this. No damn ads... I've got hundreds of adservers and thousands of specific images/dirs on sites with adimages etc etc blocked via adblock, I hardly ever see a new ad when visiting a new site (since most get ads from the same few places) and the web has become a much nicer place.
"One thing for sure is that internet advertising isn't going away, and sites that you like (this one included) stand a much better chance of staying subscription-free if the advertiser pays
- AdBlock already gives me less (next to none) ads - I'm happy... Sites may make less money by me not loading their ads, but honestly I don't give a damn, I didn't ask for the ads, I don't want the ads, it's not my problem if they can't find a less annoying source of income. If that means some sites close down, well tough, I think I'll survive.
Ohh, an on the subject of cookies, I do allow some of them - but only if related to the same site as I'm browsing, and only from sites I trust, and in any case they all get deleted when I close my browser.
"If there's anybody here in marketing or advertising, kill yourself. Seriously."
-- Bill Hicks
"So it's our choice and we're making it.
Now whether you like it or not I WILL stop you from spewing your damn graffiti onto my hard drive. If you want to keep precious IP tracking data on your drive then that's up to you. I won't let door to door salesmen make chalk marks on the side of my house for later reference either. Why do you find this so hard to understand?"
Choice is all fine and good. Howver were the "choice" crowd fails is in realizing that decisions have consequences, and they don't want to bear them. Is it any wonder the majority don't take the "choice" crowd and their stance seriously?
More optimized delivery = more money for publisher = less ads for you.
That's nice, but we had somthing different in mind.
No delivery = no money for marketers = no ads for us.
where in that 58% of people, are those who only allow cookies for say 3-4 sites like myself? Thanks to the allowcookie extention for firefox, i havent gotton a cookie i ddint want for over a year now.
Like the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -Pyrotic
P3P still requires you to have some amount of trust for the site that is setting the cookie, since AFAIK with P3P your browser decides whether to accept a cookie based solely on what the site tells it it's privacy policy is. There is no mechanism to enforce these privacy policies, and it's relatively difficult for a user to verify compliance. Worse, many sites (perhaps the majority) do not yet have P3P privacy policies, so setting a reasonably high privacy requirement immediately creates problems when surfing, since trustable, major websites are unable to set necessary cookies.
Besides this, P3P on cookies would not block the Flash-based tracking technique that the original article described. In fact, it may well be that a significant motivator behind this flash-based tracking system is that P3P is in many cases preventing the advertisers from setting durable cookies! Regardless, the fact that the advertisers are trying to get around a clearly-expressed consumer preference by defeating attempts by the consumer to delete unwanted cookies indicates that the advertisers are not to be trusted, whether they post a privacy policy or not.
I'm particularly annoyed lately about the tendency of most advertisers to use Flash, buried under layers of javascript. Images are easy to block (with Firefox) on an advertiser-by-advertiser basis. This makes it possible to penalize the 'bad' advertisers and not the better ones. With Flash, though, it's much harder to selectively block only certain advertisers. Given this new privacy issue with Flash, I will likely end up either disabling it altogether, or putting in an ad blocker that blocks all advertisers.
"I agree, blocking cookies will not make annoying ads go away... That's why I use adblock
However, you may have noticed that even adblock doesn't block Flash. The damn advertisers are using Flash to deliver the obnoxious flashing ads which we all hate and go to extreme lengths to block. They are even using Flash pop ups to get around the java based pop up blockers.
No ad-killing toolbox is complete without Flashblock
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
As far as cookies go, at the "bodega on the corner" the "guy who works there" writes down *in his own records* when you came and what you bought. He doesn't give you a piece of paper and ask you to file it in your records and then bring it back to him next time you visit. ---- and those customer loyalty cards are??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
..too late spamfuck, you just answered one of the top reasons why WE don't like tracking cookies..go fuck yourself spammer...
Five minutes ago I had no idea this problem with Flash existed. Now I've flushed all of this crap out of my system (as best I can tell).
This is one of the reasons I come to Slasdot.
Mod that man up!
Insert witty sig here.
Its funny, the combative tone some of these replies take.
I realize you have a profession, and that thsi profession happens to deal with advertising...but seriously...some people simply don't buy into the notion that they have any obligation whatsoever to take part in this little game. If I need something, I'll look for it. I'm not a money dispenser. I don't need a bunch of marketers hovering over me like vultures, waiting for any chance they get to convince me that I should buy whatever it is they're selling. I can manage the process myself, from start to finish. The hostility suggests that I'm not the only one that feels this way.
Never really understood why users dont like tracking cookies.
.. only the user ends up paying for our less accurate user tracking.
My personal information is valuable to you? Then you can have it when you start paying me.
- we can't implement frequency capping very well. this means you have a much higher chance of seeing the same damn ad, again and again and again. you like?
I don't see ads at all, I block them. You like?
- we can't send you to the right clickthru! I know we dont click on banners very often
Personally, I don't click on banners at all. Because they're blocked.
I hate advertising and spyware as much as the next guy
The next guy has them blocked.
, but ad network tracking cookies are harmless. Honestly, why are people scared of them?
Because you might think that you can get this information for free, instead of having to pay for it.
The more accurately we can report ROI to advertisers, the less annoying advertising
Less than zero? So generous.
we can still track you, by IP
How so?
I honestly believe that cookie tracking does the user an immense favour by allowing us to keep the signal to noise ratio between user and ad traffic higher.
I already keep it at 1:0. Can you improve on that?
One thing for sure is that internet advertising isn't going away
On my screen, it already has.
More optimized delivery = more money for publisher = less ads for you.
What an interesting theory.
No offence, but the shouting match was started long ago. I don't like it either, but if you're working today for /most/ companies (not all, of course) you can only compete with a marketing department and advertising budget. To not advertise is suicide.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Then things started to change. I started to see ads popping up in every damn place I went. Now with gmail, they scan your emails and give you ads based on that in an effort to get you to click on ads as much as possible. Well I, for one, am sick of ads being shoved in my face every second of the day.
Or, you can do what I did and install adblock. After a few days of training it, maybe one site per week gets through. And it would've been faster if I had known of the pre-written text files for adblock. I'm sorry it's come to this, but the millions of ads were driving me nuts. I had reached my threshhold, and, as a result, had to disable ads completely.
If my behavior reflects what most web users feel, then sites with huge amounts of ads, especially graphic ads and popups, will only be able to do this for a limited period of time. We're already seeing ie block popups, and it could become more of an issue later depending on how things evolve.
Actually I find The Proxomitron reasonably complete for ad blocking.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Tools > Options > Security > Custom Level > set the "Prompt" option for "Run ActiveX Controls and Plug-Ins." This will stop 99% of spyware infections, unwanted downloads, etc. so long as you know to tell the prompt "No" unless you actually want to load the plug-in.
Anyone who runs with the default setting of "Enable" deserves the Comet cursor and whatever else they become infested with.
To not advertise is suicide.
Then get on with it.
I want advertising officially classified as toxic waste and strictly regulated by the government.
Already there are laws against letting your dog shit in the street, against dumping rubbish in parkland, and against playing loud music in the middle of the night. I want the same protection against the torrent of advertising that washes over us like the outpouring of a broken sewer.
In the tech industry bullshit truly walks out the door and fast.
The bullshit here is clearly coming from SirSlud as it is possible to block all his ads and have nothing left standing to mess up a user's experience whatsoever.
That makes his whole argument totally moot.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I'm not going to block anyone from my site - I didn't put it up there to make money, I put it up there to help people.
These days, that seems to be a strange concept.
It's how t'internet started!
My site (steve-parker.org, FWIW) is there to offer assistance to people who want it. I added adverts when I moved from freeloading off my employer to a "real" content provider. Right now, so many people block Google ads, it provides very little income, but it covers my hosting costs (if not my time) so I'm back to where I started... I maintain the site because I believe that people will benefit from it.
I don't see a huge "war" here... I don't block Google ads because I want to see what they're putting on my site (otherwise, I would block them, and have no problem with others doing so). I block as many advertisers as possible. I, as a "publisher" know that people will block adverts. What do people want?
I don't want an Internet which consists solely of people trying to sell stuff to me... that isn't the internet I grew up with in the 90s. That's the internet I liked.
If I want to buy stuff, I'll go to amazon.com / etc; if I want info, I'll go to the "real" internet - sites like mine. If they've got adverts, I'll block them - others won't block them; someone (I don't know who these people are!) click on the adverts. That keeps the cycle going for now;
In a few years time, when (hopefully) the majority are using FireFox and understand the features, then doubleclick, Google adsense, etc, will drop off even more quickly (my Google revenue is 50% at best of what it was a year ago).
So what? There seem to be 3 motivations for putting stuff on the web:
- Interesting stuff people would like to see
- Stuff I want to sell to you
- Fuck all, but here are some adverts
I'm only interested in the first item - the second is useful, if I go to the vendor, but #3 is of no interest to me.That doesn't stop me from putting adverts on my #1 site, though. It pays the costs, and it's easy to block.
So I'm a happy content-provider, because I believe that what I'm putting out there is a Good Thing.
Just like I put out Free Software (http://speedtouchconf.sf.net/) because that's a Good Thing.
Fairy nuff? Some people actually want to benefit the world, and don't want to profit from it
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
What argument? I've posted at least 5 replies here which pointed out that if you wanted to BLOCK ads, go for it. I got no problem with that. Its if you're not blocking them, deleting cookies isn't really that useful.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I'm so sorry you havn't caught on yet that my actual parent post had nothing to do with ad blocking. I have no problem with ad blocking, so you 'gloating' about it is more cute than rebellious.
"Old man yells at systemd"
-1,000,000, Redundant.
Please see other posts. I got karma to burn if it means pointing out that blocking hosts has absolutely not one thing to do with my parent post.
"Old man yells at systemd"
It seems to me that your first point is moot. Personally, I use the AdBlock extension for Firefox (and I'm sure many others do) to block any ads I don't wish to see. Tired of seeing the same old ad? Nope, I'll never see them at all.
The other two points also seem invalid. Maybe if someone completely disabled their cookies they would be true. However, a much smarter approach is to simply set your web browser to delete cookies after a set period of time (every 30 days, for instance), or to delete them upon closing the web browser. This way tracking via cookies only lasts for a set period of time, but most other cookie functions would continue working.
I suppose that people using IE may not have these options available, so for them enabling cookies might be a better idea. Then again, who uses IE anymore? =P
I know this comment is offtopic, but I wanted to let you know that I'm impressed with your logical arguments, and how well you've been dealing with the slashtrolls and their SirSlud-shaped straw men. You've been rational and, for the most part, a cool cucumber. I respect those traits since they seem to be so rare around here.
Having said that, it's probably not worth feeding the trolls in the first place. They're ugly creatures with read-only minds; any effort to try and get them to see something they don't want to see (such as your ambivalence toward them blocking your ads) is an exercise in futility.
I can't be the only one who gets your point that deleting cookies is the wrong way to go about combating ads. I'm just one of the few who will actually admit it.
SIG: 11
First cookies, now PIE? The bad media puns just write themselves...
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
Section 508 compliance: You're not even close to right here. Flash does support section 508 compliance. It's just like any web technology, you have to take the time to do it.
But it's easier to accidentally get it close to correct using beginner level HTML/CSS than using beginner level Flash.
Another problem: Nvu costs $0, whilst Macromedia Flash costs $500 or so.
Yet another problem: Battery-powered devices such as laptops and handhelds seem to have an easier time with HTML than with Flash.
I simply delete the files that give flash support for my Mozilla install. Poof - no more flash crap.
If there's a website where I really need/want to see the flashcrap, I go to the site with IE.
Thereby giving them the chance to infect your PC with God knows what...
I have a better idea.
Refuse to see Flash at all.
Put Macromedia out of business.
Or at least, if anybody WANTs to see Flash (and I admit to having chuckled over the funny Linux Flash show Kim Polese showed recently, so it's not ALL bad), force them to make it a downloadable media object, download it and run it in a "sandbox" model.
Face it, Flash is basically a "poor man's video player". It may be cheaper (now) to make Flash animations than a real video, but that's going to go away at some point. Bodes ill for Macromedia's future earnings, I suspect.
In the meantime, unless the writers and artists are really smart, it's chintzy, crappy, lame, and boring to use Flash on a Web site. It's like looking at network television...(which is probably what it will look like once making "real" videos is feasible for these idiots.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"This aint no freaking charity you mooch."
That's right - and neither am I.
So go be homeless, thank you very much.
Or, do what Bill Hicks (quoted elsewhere) said.
The only "mooch" around here are the parasite advertisers and marketing people. Advertising is a fucking joke and a corporate money waster and I don't care how many so-called "studies" supposedly prove it works. It would be just as effective to stand there for sixty seconds repeating the product name in a monotone as some of these idiotic commercials - let alone spam.
If in fact the bulk of the population HAS been brainwashed to actually respond to advertising, then that is in fact the best argument for having all advertisers (and preferably the brainwashed population) executed.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
So your point is simply if you don't block ads, deleting cookies doesn't let you stop sending us the same crap we didn't want to see the first time.
Fine, I think everyone here understood you the first time.
What you don't seem to grasp is that we didn't want to see your crap the FIRST time.
Read my lips.
No ads. No cookies. And: No ads = no cookies. (If you don't send us stupid ads in the first place, you don't need to track us with cookies.)
Comprende?
Or read Bill Hicks's lips again.
If you are in advertising or marketing (other than the top management of a specific company making something - who are the ONLY people who should be DOING "marketing" for a product anyway - read "Up the Organization" about that), you are The Enemy.
You have no valid reason to exist.
Go away.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"On ad networks prone to account fraud, you have to set up some hoops to prevent accounts from inflating their own stats."
In other words, your whole industry is not only fraudulent to the customer, it's fraudulent to itself.
Nice.
ALL you guys are on a par with porn sites that just do clickthroughs and actually have no content.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"rather nice" is subjective. The first time I ran into flash on someone else's system I realized what a problem it was going to be. After that, I always clicked cancel when I ran into a flash object rather than download and install like the popup asked.
On my personal systems, the first thing I did upon installing Mozilla (or running it for the first time) was to search for and remove or rename the plugin that enabled flash. Besides using a custom hosts file that blocks ads, and rarely if ever viewing images or using javascript with Konqueror, this is generally enough to stay away from flash ads. The problem with this is that non-technical users view this setup as "broken" if they can't view a flash item they wanted to view even though they are spared from all the flash ads.
This is where the virus that is flash could have been nipped in the bud. If the browser developers could have simply added an option, "no, and don't ask again" to the pop up request for installation, then maybe my family members and other users less technical would have chosen that option rather than simply clicked "install" so they stopped the pop ups. If this had been done, maybe they would have seen the value in adding a button or menu option to disabling flash except on activation by user, like I can keep images turned off and just click the image icon at the top of the browser window whenever I find it necessary to view images.
The reason for such a widespread userbase/use of flash is because it was able to spread more effectively than a virus. That's the only way to really describe the method in which it was able to install itself so widely. Virus writers can only dream of the success that flash has had in penetrating users.
Thanks to this new abuse of tracking "for the good of the user, whether the user agrees or not", maybe more developers in the FOSS community will finally admit that what could have been a useful technology instead has turned into one of the worst spyware/viruses of all time.
Konqueror developers and others, add an icon/button to the navigation taskbar that turns javascript and flash on when it is off by default, just as the konqueror image icon works now. When it is off by default, an image icon appears on the toolbar that when pressed downloads images of the web page you are looking at. When not pressed, only the html downloads without images. This is far better and will cut javascript and flash usage by default much more than the menu-only choice of turning javascript on/off, even though the menu-only choice is as easy as Tools -> html settings -> javascript.
If there were the above icon/button for flash, then maybe I'd even retain the ability to view flash through the button. Without it though, I'll keep my main and auxiliary browsers flash free. Need I view a flash object, I'll keep a third browser ready and enabled, but I haven't had the need in a couple of years.
What I can't believe is how other users put up with flash ads (and popups/unders) and other animated junk when viewing what basically is static html. Javascript on for everything, accept images from all sites, etc. With Konqueror and Mozilla (and Firefox?) javascript can be turned on for specific sites only, and off for everything else which negates the often posted argument, "but web sites don't work without javascript". I don't know which sites require daily use of javascript, but I have it turned off by default, and other than my isp's site (which is registered as a javascript-allowed site in my browser settings), I haven't used javascript in months. So many months that I can't really remember when I had it turned on.
I see in other posts that flash defenders/developers claim that cameras/microphones are turned off by default in response to posts on camera/microphone security concern posts. This is only true as long as spyware/virus writers stay away from targeting these settings. As the spyware/virus developers continue to explore ways of breaking into end
Go ahead - serve up movies and Flash.
Your site will be drop-kicked to the curb even faster by the consumer than it is with banner ads.
The basic problem with the advertising industry is you've convinced yourself that you are actually useful and necessary.
You've not only lied to the consumer and the corporations, you've lied to yourself (no doubt to enable yourself to live with yourself - typical human reaction.)
Wrong premise.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Marketing/Advertising at any level is not necessarily The Enemy. Marketdroids have their legitimate reason for existence.
The problem is that marketing is based upon the premise that advertising is best achieved by being intrusive / interruptive in nature, i.e. forcing itself on people.
Perhaps intrusive marketing is a doomed concept and something else needs to be considered?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Marketing is more than advertising. Marketing also has to do with determining who needs your product - and in fact what your product should be in the first place. That part is not a problem.
Advertising as I would prefer to see it is simply the concept of bringing the existence and capabilities of your product to the attention of potential customers in a nonintrusive way.
Notice I did not say "bring dancing bears and bullshit" to the attention of anyone who happens to have his eyes and ears open within a light-year of same.
As such, the best "advertising" is a simple brochure (or online equivalent) that says, "Here is the company, here is our product name, here is what it does. If you're interested, here's how you get it, what it will cost you, yada, yada."
Period.
Now, how you get that simple exposition to the attention of people who might be interested in it - without intruding on and offending millions of people who are fucking well NOT interested in it - is obviously a problem.
A problem which I do not see ANYONE in the advertising industry trying to solve rationally.
ANY form of intrusive advertising (with the possible exception of simple mailers - and I realize some people hate physical junk mail as much as they do spam) such as popups, tracking cookies, banner ads, spyware, etc. is an ASSAULT on the consumer and should be technologically eliminated if feasible and banned if not.
I don't approve of governments regulating trade and commerce - but then I don't approve of governments creating legal fictions like corporations in the first place, either. If governments are going to exist, and allow corporations to exist, then they damn sure need to be banning ALL forms of intrusive advertising.
A NON-intrusive ad is one that is not on my property, does not assault my senses unduly, does not cost me anything to become aware of (should I so choose), does not interfere with anything I am doing, and does not require or force a response from me in any way. A billboard by the road might be a reasonable example. A leaflet in my mailbox just barely qualifies (if I don't want it, I have to junk it - but that's not hard to do in a second).
But having to receive and junk useless information is what the Web was supposed to get rid of - by allowing me to BROWSE and SEARCH for things - SEARCH to find things I KNOW I want, BROWSE to find things I DON'T know I want. (And by BROWSE, I do NOT mean wade through Web sites that are ninety percent advertising and ten percent content.)
If I want to look for products I don't know I need, I should merely have to browse company Web sites and Web sites indexing those sites. I should not have to endure every Web site on the planet throwing gigabytes down my line in the vain hope that one percent of the people so assaulted will click through and gain them a revenue of one-tenth of a cent, or whatever, per click.
Virtually everything done by advertisers on line or in the media does not qualify as nonintrusive advertising.
So then, one asks, how do Web sites support themselves?
By other means, obviously. Can't find any? Well, if you have a site that at least X number of people are truly interested in, price your site development and delivery expenses so you can charge the small enough subscription fee so people will pay it.
Stop paying Web developers a hundred dollars an hour to produce crappy sites no one wants to visit because they are overloaded with unnecessary technology (like Flash) developed solely to deliver ads to people who want your content, not your ads.
Pay for the site with the revenue you generate from doing something connected with what the site is about (consulting, or some service.) Use it as a marketing tool, not a revenue generator - that went out with the dot-com boom - unless you can actually deliver a service through the Web site.
Stop trying to make money on the site by being a shill for crap and bullshit.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
dvlabs.com was listed as someone who has used this method to store their ad shit on my system. They've been blocked at my firewall. If anyone else is running into companies that do this (you can see the list on Macromedi's control panel using the link in the writeup), please post them.
Remember, that's DVLABS.COM. Fuckheads.
It's not really brain surgery.
"How do I get to the Settings Manager panel in Macromedia Flash Player?
Use the links below to access the relevant settings manager panels directly:
* Global Privacy Settings Panel"
I'll let you figure out the actual URL for that "Global Privacy Settings Panel" link. As for which ones to change, that's as self-explanatory as where to go to change your privacy and storage options. Again, no brain surgery involved.
With sloppy enough thinking, poor logic, and an underdeveloped sense of moral and social responsibility, you, too, can convince yourself that imposing on others is really a form of helpful intervention.
The majority of bandwidth is wasted on spam and ads -- Thank you, ex-Senator Gore, for "privatizing" the Internet. (I miss archie and gopher, dammit.)
The "infotainment" industry refers to its intended audience as a "target." Think about how this sounds to somebody who used to dress like shrubbery and carry an automatic weapon at work: Why would I object to this terminology and the people who (ab)use it?
A small exercise in critical thinking:
How much LESS would internet access cost if more than half of our bandwidth weren't used to push spam and advertisements?
Ads don't pay the bills; they impose costs.
I will simply assume that you've provided 4 examples of useful flash animation. That's great. Re-read my post. I said, "rarely a boon for the end-user," and it holds. For every 3D molecule modeler, there are 300 pages that animate flashing border around an ad. Like I said.
If the email content is HTML then you can tie someones email to cookies.
Not in MS mail clients you can't - they render email HTML with "Restricted Zone" security settings, i.e. no activex, no cookies, be paranoid about form data, etc. And as the other AC says Outlook and Outlook Express now both disable remote content by default.
Are you telling us that Thunderbird sends browser cookies when it's rendering HTML mail?
Macromedia's site, when visited, attempts to download 'Flash' on all its visitors. In addition, the onerous windo$$$ cookie popup will be replaced with a similar annoying Flash popup when these 'security procedures' are followed. Numerous sites try to provend Flash to you. The crap is even in new linux installs, but unlike windo$$, it is easy to kill Flash in linux. Just remove its package. Flash is dangerous. It is, regretably, preinstalled on many new systems sold as a package to 'consumers'. 'Consumers' is a code word for 'suckers', as that is exactly how they are used in today's market. These commoditized machines do not come with an identifiable 'system disk' like the old days. Now all the consumer gets is a 'rescue disk(s). Use of these rescue disk(s) only puts the same malware back that the customer lucklessly tried to get rid of my reformatting his machine assuming he had the skill to even do THAT. The only way for a commoditized machine owner to escape is to shred all the data on the hard drives of his machine, then install a totally new, purchased separately,
operating system. He well also have to back up his data before doing this, as well as research and obtain independantly all the device drivers that he will need, just like a linux system owner.
ah, you know what they say.
"You can't polish a turd"
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Homestarrunner.com
"Butt's twelve by PIEs" is making a lot more sense to me now. Has my beloved Stongba been tracking me all along?
Yes it does. It can also block java and other third party plugins.
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
You're cute when you get ideological.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Why would we trust them when they claim that they need cookies...
You can currently delete the individual cookies, but what about the index.dat file, what does that contain?
NB, that with Firefox you can not only block unwanted cookies, but also prevent future cookies from being set by that site. Useful.
Wanna bet?
A well configured Adblock, or a good filter such as Filterset.G (google it, it's the first result) will get you rid of most ads, flash included, and Tools > Adblock > Overlay Flash will add a nice little "block my hairy ass" button to any kind of flash movie or anything...
You can also use the cute FlashBlock extension, that replaces flash with a button without loading it, if you want the flash you click the button, if you don't you leave it as-is...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Costco doesn't seem to advertise (at least, I've never seen one), but they are damn popular, and make almost 50 billion a year. That doesn't sound like suicide to me.
>>I honestly believe that cookie tracking does the >>user an immense favour by allowing us to keep the >>signal to noise ratio between user and ad traffic >>higher.
You guys don't get it do you? To us humans, it's all noise. There's no signal there.
No. The word is not customer. It's consumer and there's a difference. A customer is a beautiful and unique person that enters an establishment to make a purchase and a consumer is any number of cattle-like drones that rush out and buy the first crap they're told to.
:)
Marketing does NOT see you as a customer but it DOES see you as a consumer.
-Morning
Advertisers (the few that get past my custom HOSTS file) are quite welcome to profile me based on my IP address, the one I share with all of my ISP's other customers. SQUID is good for something after all...
.sol file with logs of article titles I've read at nyt and cnn over the past few months...
.bat file run at startup now takes care of business:
/s /q "%APPDATA%\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support"
But when it comes to permanently storing anything on my HD without my prior permission they're SOL!
I wasn't happy to find a 150K
This simple line in a
rmdir
> Flash does support section 508 compliance. It's just like any web technology
..From the link.. ]
[
> Finally, screen reader users will need to access Macromedia Flash content
> using the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.
> This is the only browser with support for MSAA
Geez, and I thought you were from Macromedia, not M$
Isn't it a bit stupid to base a claim to accessibility on a proprietary vendor API?
excellent.
Music piracy is not stealing (or piracy), but advertising is dumping toxic waste!
and for the opposite, overcharging. I've got friends who travel and the airline will use tracking cookies in combination with other sites (like travel sites) to guess what people are willing to pay and offer different (often higher) rates.
Example: I know you've been hitting a lot of sites about Hawaii and a few about China, so I know you're more likely to want to go to Hawaii and I adjust my rates accordingly.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It seems that UK-based Websites that use Flash to track visitors must clearly display a reference to this use. This is because UK legislation is not specific to cookies.
Information Commissioner's Office
Information Commissioner
"Cookies or similar devices shall not be used unless the subscriber or user of the relevant terminal equipment a) is provided with clear and comprehensive information about the purposes of the storage of, or access to, that information; and b) is given the opportunity to refuse the storage of, or access to, that information."
privacy and electronic communications (ec directive) reg. 2003
"...a visitor must be informed wherever a cookie or other tracking system enables the collection of personal data. This might be done via an on-line notification that appears before data collection begins, or via the website's privacy statement. However, if a notification provided via an on-line privacy statement is to be relied upon it is important that at least some reference to the use of tracking technology is clearly displayed to all site visitors."
FAQ
The marketers have responded with PIE. Persistent Identification Element (PIE) is a technology that uses Macromedia's Flash MX to track you even without using cookies.
slashdot
"[Macromedia] Local Shared Objects have the same functionality as cookies" Slashdot
"The list of Visited Websites displays the following information for each website: The name of the website..."
Privacy Settings
(IANAL)