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."
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
if i had a girlfriend...
I can now stop time, but the effect is only temporary
"MMMMMMMmmmmmm.... PIE..."
I still won't load plugins into my browser, even if they offer the feature of being able to track me better.
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"
first cookies then pies
sheesh what's next.. cake?
-SJ53
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
To aid your visitor tracking, here is today's log of my Slashdot visits:
Log on,
Letter
... 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
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.
In that context, the "39% of users" and "once a month" actually sounds very conservative. I wonder where they got their figures?
The irony is that deleting cookies after the fact is not a very good privacy measure -- the people who planted them have already had a good chance to track your usage. It's much more effective to set your browser not to provide cookie information except to the originating site.
In other words, the whole cookie issue is just plain bogus.
"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
have to delete cookies from old porn sites to make space so that i could visit new porn sites.
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 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.
You doubt 58% are actively deleting cookies, but you think the same 58% are doing OS reinstalls? Dude...
I consider Flash dangerous, and I don't execute dangerous code unless I REALLY trust the place I'm getting it.
wait wait wait...so you would execute dangerous code if trust the source?
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.
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.
DoubleClick .. they own all those domains at 127.0.0.1 right? Normally they're at 0.0.0.0 to save the lookup, but I've been playing with local servers on port 80 to give cute cat pictures or other information like fortune cookies. It certainly improves the look of some banner-heavy sites! (And I have a sound effect for each hit, so I know when it's banner-heavy or has 1x1 trackers.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.