<a ping> tracking what links you click on

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Don Drake <don () drakeconsult com>
Date: January 18, 2006 10:49:07 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: <a ping> tracking what links you click on

Dave,



I found this via Slashdot, a new attribute to anchor tags that is  
being implemented in the next version of Firefox (1.6a) that makes it  
easier than ever to track what links you’re clicking.



-Don



http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/darin/archives/009594.html



I've been meaning to blog about a new web platform feature that we've  
added to trunk builds of Firefox. It is now possible to define a ping  
attribute on anchor and area tags. When a user follows a link via one  
of these tags, the browser will send notification pings to the  
specified URLs after following the link.



I'm sure this may raise some eye-brows among privacy conscious folks,  
but please know that this change is being considered with the utmost  
regard for user privacy. The point of this feature is to enable link  
tracking mechanisms commonly employed on the web to get out of the  
critical path and thereby reduce the time required for users to see  
the page they clicked on. Many websites will employ redirects to have  
all link clicks on their site first go back to them so they can know  
what you are doing and then redirect your browser to the site you  
thought you were going to. The net result is that you end up waiting  
for the redirect to occur before your browser even begins to load the  
site that you want to go to. This can have a significant impact on  
page load performance.



Websites even employ "onmousedown" event handlers that change the  
href attribute at the very last second before a click occurs. This  
makes it so that hovering over the link displays the location that  
you want to go to, but it still ends up taking you someplace else.



This change is being considered in large part because some very  
popular websites have asked for a solution to this problem. The  
feature itself was designed and specified by the WhatWG.



Donald Drake

President

Drake Consulting

http://www.drakeconsult.com/

312-560-1574





-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/