Web walls have Web Bugs with ears!
Written: Aug 06 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Bugs Keep site administrators honest.
Cons: Could evolve into the next generation of spyware.
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| Schinjay's Full Review: Archived Computers & Internet Reviews |
Next time you burst into a web room you’d better keep your voice down because the walls have bugs and they might hear something you don’t want them to.
With all of the horror stories wafting through cyber space these days about luvworms, trojans, backdoors, bubbleboys and the such, all we need to hear is that there are “Web Bugs” attached to many sites we surf on a daily basis. These bugs reportedly have ears and are programmed to report back to their creators alerting them that you were there. Where is that can of Raid?
These bugs usually come in the form of small 1 by 1 pixel graphic files stored on a web site or within an email. They are represented by an HTML IMG tag and are too small to be seen by the naked eye so don’t worry about looking for them. But this is not always the case. Any graphic on a web site can be used as a “bug”. Hellooooo, Is the Orkin Man in please?
“Bugs” are usually programmed to send back information to their creators concerning the IP address of the visiting computer, the URL of the page where the “bug” is located, the URL of the “bug” itself, the time the “bug” was viewed, the type of browser that fetched the “bug” and sometimes a previously set cookie value.
"Bugs" have been found at some very popular sites such as Quicken, FedEx, Oil of Olay, eToys, Barnes and Noble and (surprise!) Microsoft. You can tell already that due to their widespread use these little pests may be annoying, but by nature they are not programmed to be nearly invasive as some of their larger “spyware” cousins. So maybe we don’t have to worry about them as much.
Ad networks could use them to keep personal files of what sites a person is visiting but up till now that has not been proven to be the case. Fred Langa looked into these little “bugs” for a report on his Internet “LangaList” and came to the conclusion that most “web bugs” he encountered did little more than make a call to static graphic file at its home site that registered a hit. So they usually do little more than count the visit and possibly register what page the hit came from.
The type of information sent back consists of statistical data that is not connected to any particular computer and cannot be tracked back to you. Langa further surmised that “bugs” are primarily used to keep site owners honest in the amount of hits their sites are generating for a particular advertiser. Oh, where is the trust?
Langa says that in order for the bugs to collect specific personal data on any user there would have to be two “bugs” involved and that a user would have to be very cooperative with one of the “bugs”, voluntarily giving it personal information like that entered on a registration form of some kind.
So, because it would take a great amount of activity and collusion on the part of some web site operators to set up such a situation, it is unlikely that someone could secretly sneak some kind of bug onto a site that could collect very much personal information on you or anyone else.
“Web bugs” do have the potential to be used as spyware and you should be aware of them, but at this point in their evolution they are not worth getting very paranoid about.
That's my epinion. Mahalo for stopping by.
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Schinjay
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Member: Steve Schindler
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 57 members
About Me:
Steve Schindler writes his informative and humorous "Schindler's Cyber List" for epinions.com.
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