Extracted item for information.
Source:Edupage, August 15, 2001
- - - - -
"WEB BUGS" TRACK INTERNET USE
A new Cyveillance report finds that "Web bugs"--invisible
technology that gathers information on Web site visitors--are
embedded in 18 percent of personal Web pages, compared to less
than 0.5 percent in 1998. Companies such as America Online and
Yahoo!'s Geocities include Web bugs in the Web page-building
technology they offer free to users. Spokesmen for Web bug
distributors claim that the technology is not in any way used to
collect personally identifiable data on visitors, but privacy
proponents are concerned, especially when consumers are unaware
that their personal pages host Web bugs. Yahoo! does not mention
the fact that Web bugs are placed on personal pages, and AOL
fails to describe their use. "It's extremely troubling--the
technology should not be used to collect information in such a
covert way," argued PricewaterhouseCoopers' Scott Charney.
(New York Times, 14 August 2001)
-- phone +61 2 6241 7659 mailto:me@Tony-Barry.emu.id.au http://purl.oclc.org/NET/Tony.Barry
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.1 : Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:10:04 EST