PDA

View Full Version : Privacy and Web Trackers...



AplusWebMaster
2009-06-04, 18:55
FYI...

- http://www.darkreading.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=217701421
June 3, 2009 - "... The study by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley (PDF*), which was released late Monday, indicates that Web users may be tracked ("bugged," as the researchers put it) by dozens of sources on a visit to a single site. In a single month, they found 100 monitoring agents on one site, blogspot.com. While many of the trackers used on blogging sites are low-level monitors used by bloggers to see who's reading their content, the big companies - such as Google - are also tracking a large portion of Web traffic, the report says. "We found five trackers overall operated by Google, including Analytics, DoubleClick, AdSense, FriendConnect, and Widgets," the researchers say. "Among the top 100 Websites this project focused on, Google Analytics appeared on 81 of them," the report states. "When combined with the other trackers it operates, Google can track 47 of the top 50 Websites, and 92 of the top 100 Websites. Further, a Google-operated tracker appeared on 348,059 of 393,829 distinct domains tracked by Ghostery in March 2009 - over 88 percent of the domains tracked by Ghostery that month"... "In our analysis of the privacy policies, we found that 46 of the top 50 companies affirmatively state that they share data with affiliates, and the four remaining were unclear," the researchers report. "We sent each company a request via email or an online Web form for a list of each affiliate they may share data with. We received 14 replies, but none included the lists we asked for. Most stated that they do not disclose corporate information..."
* http://knowprivacy.org/report/KnowPrivacy_Final_Report.pdf

- http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/06/02_webprivacy.shtml

:fear::spider::sad: