Re: maybe not djf AT&T the Web Spy? -- And Their Big Google Lie

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: David L Neil Mailing list a/c <ip () etelligence info>
Date: August 16, 2008 4:45:51 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   maybe not djf AT&T the Web Spy? -- And Their  
Big Google Lie

David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
> From:
> Date: August 16, 2008 1:31:45 AM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: PLEAE WITHHOLD MY NAME Re: [IP] Re: maybe not djf AT&T the  
> Web
> Spy? -- And Their Big Google Lie
...

> Aside from other sites large and small, major porn site operators use
> google analytics.  The click streams in that business are already
> overwhelming enough without having to run data warehousing servers to
> crunch user paths through your site on your own servers.  Which of
> course is another reason many large sites use it. The "free" part then
> is really saving some money above and beyond the price of software to
> run your own in house web analytics, the hardware and time to run some
> of the number crunching can get high pretty quickly.
>
> So just remember, those dirty pictures you looked at might be sending
> your clicks into google's click logs too.  Maybe a browser addon that
> alerts to google analytics tracking on a page would be an idea for
> someone to make (if it doesn't exist already).
>
> -Name withheld


Within Firefox (which natively cuts-out MS' Active-X, even under Windows
OpSys), I use an Add-on called NoScript. As implied it stops the browser
from executing scripts within downloaded web pages unless granted
permission (by the page/browser session or permanently to that site) -
so in fact it works by banning/allowing scripts originating from named
Internet domains cf by the script as a unit.

I randomly and quickly scanned some of the web pages/tabs I have open at
the moment, and found that Sitepoint.com use Google Analytics - well
they would if I would only cooperate...

The sample included other 'Google' appearances, eg GoogleSyndication and
GoogleAdServices.com, as well as Google.com's search widget-ery. These
in and amongst the other operations we love-to-hate, eg DoubleClick.net
and StatCounter.com; as well as 'Web 2.0 services', eg Digg.com, and
bulk outfits, eg Tacoda.

The Firefox Add-on can be a pain - one has to remember to turn on
scripts for sites which use JavaScript to substitute for their
developers' lack of HTML coding ability (some of which are so bad that
they can not even deliver the main article-content without JS!!!???).
However it appears useful as a 'cloaking device' from tracking services.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can disabuse me of this notion or
confirm the efficacy of such software towards such ends?
(I'm taking a tour of Tor to see what impact that might have on 'unique
page visitors' and similar tracking/analytics)

I wonder if any WebAdmins have ever wondered why they experience
discrepancies between their tracking service's figures and analysis of
the local Apache log files?

Regards,
=dn
(no affiliation to Mozilla or NoScript)




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