Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Are Cookies Evil? What Service Do Cookies Perform In A Web Browser?
They cookies are bad and make invade your privacy? We are not talking about the kind of cookie eating, we are talking about computer crackers! It is not true that cookies are bad. So what is a cookie, what is fact and what does it do? A cookie is a small text file that a Web site can place on the team as they navigate the pages of this site. One of the things people do not understand is that a Web site can only read and write their own cookies, which are unable to access another website cookies. Cookies are used to store information on a variety of topics, such as a name, a selection or choice. This information is read again from the time they start other pages on the site, or, in visits to the site. What reason is a Web site need to use cookies? Web Browsers are stateless, statelessness means that as through several pages of a site, each of those pages is a separate and distinct. For example, the web server does not know which is the same person who was in the home who made the request for the order page. This is very different from desktop applications like Microsoft Excel that you run on your computer. The web server by visiting all applications as individual requests for pages, not like a visit from you. As you move through a website and select things and make decisions, thus avoiding the repetition of that re-enter or select the information you load each page? Usually, the answer is a cookie. A cookie can be used by the web server to track as a user so that when you navigate from page A to B, the web server knows that you and the developer of the website can be stored in reference articles In its cookie maintain a state of the experience for its session or visit the website. Sometimes, you may want or need to delete cookies. You can delete cookies in several ways. Most web browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, etc.) have different ways to do this, check your browser& 39;s help on how to clear the cache files and cookies. There are also several software packages for the PC and clean these packages also delete cookies. The use of cookies improving its user experience when browsing the Internet. Is there a security risk or danger to cookies? A site may use cookies to store information you enter in forms on web pages, and that& 39;s where security issues arise. Usually this will never cause any problems, however, before letting someone use your computer, or having your computer in any repair or services provided clear the cache and cookies! Each browser is different, so check with your help files for the browser using (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, etc.) so as to remove the cache files and cookies.
Web Analytics – Why they are important. -UK View- December 11, 2007
The advent of Google analytics was for most web users a fantastic way to track and monitor website activity free of charge. This piece of software was created after Google purchased the Urchin Software Corp in April 2005. Demand was so high when Google launched Google Analytics that they soon suspended applications and created an invitation only model.
For what it is, a free analytics package it cannot be faulted. How can you complain about something that is free? Well I’m going to try….For webmasters who do not engage is any form of online marketing, be it PPC, Affiliates, OMP, then Google analytics will suit you just fine. You can monitor conversions, bounce rates, traffic, the list is endless. All very well and good, but it does have its limitations. I am always staggered as to why companies will spend thousands on media but pennies on analytics. To accompany Analytics, Google also launched Google Adwords tracking, a very simple and basic way of tracking PPC campaigns.
Here are some of limitations of using both of these packages..
• People delete cookies (upto 30% according to some estimates). Some advanced tracking packages such as E-tracker have ways round this by tracking a pixel. I know when I started using it the recorded conversions increased dramatically.
• There is no customer support for Google Analytics, all there appears to be is qualified companies who charge extortionate hourly rates for assistance.
• Ad block software will often block the Urchin tracker.
• Users may not have a JavaScript enabled browser.
• The data can be incomplete – often I see hundreds of clicks from the keyword “(not set)” meaning Google has not been able to resolve what the keyword was.
• You cannot see users journeys, for example a user will often come back to a site on different keywords but the conversion is always attributed to the last keyword, often the brand term. This distorts the value of your PPC campaign and it makes generic keywords look overly expensive.
• You cannot integrate different marketing channels in Google . For example if you are running an OMP campaign, a user may click a banner ad, then later click a PPC ad, then perhaps later come through the brand term on natural search. A decent analytics package can track these kinds of user journeys. By doing this you can optimise each marketing channel.
If you are spending £50 a day on Adwords for example then clearly it is not worth spending £500 a month on an analytics package. But if you are spending big sums on money, particularly across the various marketing channels, then it is well worth investing in a decent web analytics package.
For what it is, a free analytics package it cannot be faulted. How can you complain about something that is free? Well I’m going to try….For webmasters who do not engage is any form of online marketing, be it PPC, Affiliates, OMP, then Google analytics will suit you just fine. You can monitor conversions, bounce rates, traffic, the list is endless. All very well and good, but it does have its limitations. I am always staggered as to why companies will spend thousands on media but pennies on analytics. To accompany Analytics, Google also launched Google Adwords tracking, a very simple and basic way of tracking PPC campaigns.
Here are some of limitations of using both of these packages..
• People delete cookies (upto 30% according to some estimates). Some advanced tracking packages such as E-tracker have ways round this by tracking a pixel. I know when I started using it the recorded conversions increased dramatically.
• There is no customer support for Google Analytics, all there appears to be is qualified companies who charge extortionate hourly rates for assistance.
• Ad block software will often block the Urchin tracker.
• Users may not have a JavaScript enabled browser.
• The data can be incomplete – often I see hundreds of clicks from the keyword “(not set)” meaning Google has not been able to resolve what the keyword was.
• You cannot see users journeys, for example a user will often come back to a site on different keywords but the conversion is always attributed to the last keyword, often the brand term. This distorts the value of your PPC campaign and it makes generic keywords look overly expensive.
• You cannot integrate different marketing channels in Google . For example if you are running an OMP campaign, a user may click a banner ad, then later click a PPC ad, then perhaps later come through the brand term on natural search. A decent analytics package can track these kinds of user journeys. By doing this you can optimise each marketing channel.
If you are spending £50 a day on Adwords for example then clearly it is not worth spending £500 a month on an analytics package. But if you are spending big sums on money, particularly across the various marketing channels, then it is well worth investing in a decent web analytics package.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Consumer Advocates Seek a ‘Do-Not-Track’ List
By LOUISE STORY
A coalition of privacy groups asked the government today to set up a mandatory do-not-track list for the Internet.
The groups — which include the Consumer Federation of America, World Privacy Forum and several others — are worried that online advertising companies are collecting too much data about consumers’ Web habits.
For a few years, advertisers have been using information about what Web sites people visit to deliver ads to them later on. The practice is called behavioral targeting, and the Federal Trade Commission is hosting a forum tomorrow and Friday about the privacy issues it raises.
While advertisers often say that consumers like receiving ads that are relevant to them rather than generic, privacy advocates say that most people do not realize the amount of personal information they are sharing with marketers.
“I think this is about consumer knowledge and choice,” said Leslie Harris, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, in an interview.
“A consumer can choose to say, ‘I don’t care that they have all this information about me. These ads are valuable to me,’ but a consumer should also be able to say, ‘I don’t want them to have all that information,’” said Ms. Harris, whose organization is among the nine groups asking for the do-not-track list.
A do-not-track list would not reduce the number of ads people see on Web sites. Instead, people who signed up for the service would simply see ads that are not specialized for them, since advertisers would not be using the consumers’ recent history on the Web to surmise their interests.
The consumer groups also want the government to redefine what information is considered to be personally identifiable to include behavior online, in instances when Web searches can be traced to an individual person.
Executives from several of the groups involved in the do-not-track initiative will speak at the F.T.C.’s forum alongside executives from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and the AOL unit of Time Warner. This morning, AOL announced a boost in its own opt-out system, and executives there said other online advertising companies should follow its lead.
AOL will be running a public education campaign in the coming months to inform Web users about the upside of behavioral targeting, which includes getting offers for products and services that could potentially be helpful or appealing.
It has been eight years since the F.T.C. drilled down into the privacy implications of online advertising. Last year, the agency held a technology forum and pinpointed behavioral targeting as a major problem area. Since then, there have been a number of high-profile acquisitions of advertising technology companies that have put more of the data into fewer hands. Among those are Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive, a company that owns the ad-delivery company Atlas, and Google’s proposed deal to purchase DoubleClick, another ad-delivery company. The F.T.C. is still evaluating the Google deal, but it is studying it for antitrust implications rather than privacy concerns.
The assumption in online advertising has been that consumers will opt-out of tracking if they do not like it, but most advertising networks’ opt-out policies are difficult to follow and find. And consumers who delete cookies — small bits of text sent from users computers to servers — after signing up for an opt-out policy sometimes delete their opt-out choice along with the cookies.
“We have really moved to a world where we say consumers need to police the market, and, increasingly, it is a harder world to police,” said Martin Abrams, executive director of the Center for Information Policy Leadership, a think tank within the law firm Hunton & Williams that is financed by companies like Microsoft, Best Buy and Google.
The coalition of privacy groups also called for a system of disclosure notices on Internet ads, which would be required to notify consumers if behavioral tracking was involved. The groups also want companies to show consumers the profiles they are building about them, upon request.
The do-not-track list would be a comprehensive list of the servers of advertising companies. Consumers could download the list and use it to change the settings on their Web browsers.
Ms. Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology said her group was mainly concerned with data that online advertising companies store to create user profiles. Some companies, like Google, choose what ads to show people based on the context of what they are searching for or typing about (in Gmail) at that very moment. But Google says it does not store that data.
The F.T.C. has been asked many times to create some kind of a do-not-track list, said Eileen Harrington, deputy director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the agency. Ms. Harris said this was the first time that so many privacy and consumer advocacy groups had coalesced around the issue.
“The goal of providing a consumer with advertising that matches their interests is something that provides a lot of value to consumers,” Ms. Harrington said. “But there are questions about whether it may also come with costs that consumers don’t want to pay.”
A coalition of privacy groups asked the government today to set up a mandatory do-not-track list for the Internet.
The groups — which include the Consumer Federation of America, World Privacy Forum and several others — are worried that online advertising companies are collecting too much data about consumers’ Web habits.
For a few years, advertisers have been using information about what Web sites people visit to deliver ads to them later on. The practice is called behavioral targeting, and the Federal Trade Commission is hosting a forum tomorrow and Friday about the privacy issues it raises.
While advertisers often say that consumers like receiving ads that are relevant to them rather than generic, privacy advocates say that most people do not realize the amount of personal information they are sharing with marketers.
“I think this is about consumer knowledge and choice,” said Leslie Harris, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, in an interview.
“A consumer can choose to say, ‘I don’t care that they have all this information about me. These ads are valuable to me,’ but a consumer should also be able to say, ‘I don’t want them to have all that information,’” said Ms. Harris, whose organization is among the nine groups asking for the do-not-track list.
A do-not-track list would not reduce the number of ads people see on Web sites. Instead, people who signed up for the service would simply see ads that are not specialized for them, since advertisers would not be using the consumers’ recent history on the Web to surmise their interests.
The consumer groups also want the government to redefine what information is considered to be personally identifiable to include behavior online, in instances when Web searches can be traced to an individual person.
Executives from several of the groups involved in the do-not-track initiative will speak at the F.T.C.’s forum alongside executives from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and the AOL unit of Time Warner. This morning, AOL announced a boost in its own opt-out system, and executives there said other online advertising companies should follow its lead.
AOL will be running a public education campaign in the coming months to inform Web users about the upside of behavioral targeting, which includes getting offers for products and services that could potentially be helpful or appealing.
It has been eight years since the F.T.C. drilled down into the privacy implications of online advertising. Last year, the agency held a technology forum and pinpointed behavioral targeting as a major problem area. Since then, there have been a number of high-profile acquisitions of advertising technology companies that have put more of the data into fewer hands. Among those are Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive, a company that owns the ad-delivery company Atlas, and Google’s proposed deal to purchase DoubleClick, another ad-delivery company. The F.T.C. is still evaluating the Google deal, but it is studying it for antitrust implications rather than privacy concerns.
The assumption in online advertising has been that consumers will opt-out of tracking if they do not like it, but most advertising networks’ opt-out policies are difficult to follow and find. And consumers who delete cookies — small bits of text sent from users computers to servers — after signing up for an opt-out policy sometimes delete their opt-out choice along with the cookies.
“We have really moved to a world where we say consumers need to police the market, and, increasingly, it is a harder world to police,” said Martin Abrams, executive director of the Center for Information Policy Leadership, a think tank within the law firm Hunton & Williams that is financed by companies like Microsoft, Best Buy and Google.
The coalition of privacy groups also called for a system of disclosure notices on Internet ads, which would be required to notify consumers if behavioral tracking was involved. The groups also want companies to show consumers the profiles they are building about them, upon request.
The do-not-track list would be a comprehensive list of the servers of advertising companies. Consumers could download the list and use it to change the settings on their Web browsers.
Ms. Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology said her group was mainly concerned with data that online advertising companies store to create user profiles. Some companies, like Google, choose what ads to show people based on the context of what they are searching for or typing about (in Gmail) at that very moment. But Google says it does not store that data.
The F.T.C. has been asked many times to create some kind of a do-not-track list, said Eileen Harrington, deputy director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the agency. Ms. Harris said this was the first time that so many privacy and consumer advocacy groups had coalesced around the issue.
“The goal of providing a consumer with advertising that matches their interests is something that provides a lot of value to consumers,” Ms. Harrington said. “But there are questions about whether it may also come with costs that consumers don’t want to pay.”
Cookies, online tracking and advertising
When you surf the Internet, advertisers and marketers are likely using Web cookies to track your online habits -- what you buy, what Web sites you visit and how often -- in order to target their ads to you. If you're searching reviews of a specific movie or car, for example, you may later see an ad for that movie or car even when you've moved on to a completely unrelated site.
It's called behavioral advertising, and consumer advocacy groups are pushing for a way to opt out of it. A coalition of nine groups today proposed a "Do Not Track" list for users who don't want to be tracked online. The coalition asked the Federal Trade Commission to require advertisers to register all domain names of the servers that set "persistent unique identifier." Consumers could then download that list and block them. For the group's full proposal, click here.
Stopbadware.org challenged folks with a $5,000 prize to come up with 2-minute videos to explain Web cookies and explore their privacy implications. Here's one that made the cut. For all five, go here.
The winner will be announced Thursday, when the FTC's workshop on Ehaviorial Advertising begins in Washington, D.C.
Web cookies are plain text files that are transferred from the server to your browser and get stored on your computer's hard drive. Aside from tracking how often you visit certain sites, cookies allow Web sites to remember your log in or items you place in a shopping cart. ZDNet's Larry Dignan says there's nothing to worry about, including that cookies are "anonymous."
One easy way to protect yourself is to delete your cookies, run an anti-spyware program that deletes tracking programs or set up your browser to not permit them in the first place. For more on how to disable cookies, click on this useful site.
It's called behavioral advertising, and consumer advocacy groups are pushing for a way to opt out of it. A coalition of nine groups today proposed a "Do Not Track" list for users who don't want to be tracked online. The coalition asked the Federal Trade Commission to require advertisers to register all domain names of the servers that set "persistent unique identifier." Consumers could then download that list and block them. For the group's full proposal, click here.
Stopbadware.org challenged folks with a $5,000 prize to come up with 2-minute videos to explain Web cookies and explore their privacy implications. Here's one that made the cut. For all five, go here.
The winner will be announced Thursday, when the FTC's workshop on Ehaviorial Advertising begins in Washington, D.C.
Web cookies are plain text files that are transferred from the server to your browser and get stored on your computer's hard drive. Aside from tracking how often you visit certain sites, cookies allow Web sites to remember your log in or items you place in a shopping cart. ZDNet's Larry Dignan says there's nothing to worry about, including that cookies are "anonymous."
One easy way to protect yourself is to delete your cookies, run an anti-spyware program that deletes tracking programs or set up your browser to not permit them in the first place. For more on how to disable cookies, click on this useful site.
Darn Cookies (...Computer Cookies, That Is)
We're talking about computers, here, not about recipes. If you have ever used the Internet, there is every chance that 'cookies' reside on the hard drive in your machine.
"Cookies" seem to come in two varieties. We'll call one "Cookies-In" and the other "Cookies-Out." What's the difference and why should you care? Bear with me, and I'll try to keep the explanation simple.
A computer "cookie" is essentially a bit of software coding put onto your device that reports information about your computer to someone else. Most often, you are probably unaware that this coding has been installed or that it is operating. "Cookies" can slow your machine if there are enough of them, but they are usually not particularly noticeable.
Okay, so "cookies" report information about your computer to someone else. In some cases, the reporting is useful to you. When, for example, I do my banking on the Internet, the website of the institution I use wants to know, first, the number of my account and, second, my password. Trying to keep track of passwords is a subject all by itself, but I surely don't want to have to remember and enter the 16-digit account number every time I check my account or perform a transaction.
Major web sites nowadays will let you save your account number and your password on your computer so that you do not need to enter the information every time you try to access the web site. In my case, I save the account number only - not my password. If someone else uses my computer, they can get to the homepage of my bank and they will have my account number, but without my password, that's as far as they will get. And, for me, I don't have to remember that 16-digit account number when I do my online banking.
This is a case of what I want to call a "Cookie-In." The "cookie" is helpful to me. I want the convenience it provides, and I do not mind that when I use the web site, my computer is automatically reporting my account number to the bank. Unfortunately, not all "cookies," are so benign.
Many web sites employ "cookies" to report to someone else your use of the Internet. The specific information that is gathered on your usage can vary from one "cookie" service to another. For me, however, it is enough that a "cookie" has been installed on my machine without my permission and any information is being reported to someone else about how I use it. These types of "cookies," ones that do not particularly benefit me and are of greater benefit to someone else, bother me greatly. They are the types of "cookies" that I want to call "Cookie-Outs."
Web site providers that use "Cookie-out" services seem to argue that we can all benefit from the information that they collect. They can target ads that will appeal to particular populations. They can design ads to be more appealing. They can decide what products to promote and which to drop, and so forth. These arguments all support the concept of commerce. Where you might stand on the issues of commerce is unknown to me. Where I stand, however, is that the Internet ought not to be simply another vehicle for commercial enterprises to find better ways to entice me to part with the 'almighty buck.'
I have the expectation that I am not alone. I am reconciled to the idea that the Internet will have advertisements. I even believe that some level of commercialism is beneficial, supporting efforts to bring more and more information to the Internet. I do not, though, want my computer usage monitored and I especially do not want it monitored without my permission. There is, of course, no reason why a "Cookie-Out" could not announce that it will be loaded, that it will gather X, Y, and Z information, and do you grant your permission, yes or no, to it continuing. It's not done, most likely because a lot of folks like you and me would answer no, skewing the statistical results of the information that they try to gather.
So, what can you do about "Cookies-Out?" The answer is that you can, in fact, get rid of a lot of "Cookies-Out," even if it looks as though it will be an ongoing battle until something more global is done about the problem.
"Cookies" seem to come in two varieties. We'll call one "Cookies-In" and the other "Cookies-Out." What's the difference and why should you care? Bear with me, and I'll try to keep the explanation simple.
A computer "cookie" is essentially a bit of software coding put onto your device that reports information about your computer to someone else. Most often, you are probably unaware that this coding has been installed or that it is operating. "Cookies" can slow your machine if there are enough of them, but they are usually not particularly noticeable.
Okay, so "cookies" report information about your computer to someone else. In some cases, the reporting is useful to you. When, for example, I do my banking on the Internet, the website of the institution I use wants to know, first, the number of my account and, second, my password. Trying to keep track of passwords is a subject all by itself, but I surely don't want to have to remember and enter the 16-digit account number every time I check my account or perform a transaction.
Major web sites nowadays will let you save your account number and your password on your computer so that you do not need to enter the information every time you try to access the web site. In my case, I save the account number only - not my password. If someone else uses my computer, they can get to the homepage of my bank and they will have my account number, but without my password, that's as far as they will get. And, for me, I don't have to remember that 16-digit account number when I do my online banking.
This is a case of what I want to call a "Cookie-In." The "cookie" is helpful to me. I want the convenience it provides, and I do not mind that when I use the web site, my computer is automatically reporting my account number to the bank. Unfortunately, not all "cookies," are so benign.
Many web sites employ "cookies" to report to someone else your use of the Internet. The specific information that is gathered on your usage can vary from one "cookie" service to another. For me, however, it is enough that a "cookie" has been installed on my machine without my permission and any information is being reported to someone else about how I use it. These types of "cookies," ones that do not particularly benefit me and are of greater benefit to someone else, bother me greatly. They are the types of "cookies" that I want to call "Cookie-Outs."
Web site providers that use "Cookie-out" services seem to argue that we can all benefit from the information that they collect. They can target ads that will appeal to particular populations. They can design ads to be more appealing. They can decide what products to promote and which to drop, and so forth. These arguments all support the concept of commerce. Where you might stand on the issues of commerce is unknown to me. Where I stand, however, is that the Internet ought not to be simply another vehicle for commercial enterprises to find better ways to entice me to part with the 'almighty buck.'
I have the expectation that I am not alone. I am reconciled to the idea that the Internet will have advertisements. I even believe that some level of commercialism is beneficial, supporting efforts to bring more and more information to the Internet. I do not, though, want my computer usage monitored and I especially do not want it monitored without my permission. There is, of course, no reason why a "Cookie-Out" could not announce that it will be loaded, that it will gather X, Y, and Z information, and do you grant your permission, yes or no, to it continuing. It's not done, most likely because a lot of folks like you and me would answer no, skewing the statistical results of the information that they try to gather.
So, what can you do about "Cookies-Out?" The answer is that you can, in fact, get rid of a lot of "Cookies-Out," even if it looks as though it will be an ongoing battle until something more global is done about the problem.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Cookies create problems for Rockies fans
DENVER – Amid an angry crowd chanting "We want tickets," Rockies spokesperson Jay Alves announced World Series ticket sales have been suspended Monday.
Alves says virtually all the tickets are still available, due to a computer system malfunction. He says only several hundred tickets were sold.
"Right now we're shutting the system down .... We expect to be online at some point," Alves said.
According to Alves, the Colorado Rockies will announce new plans to sell the tickets at some point later Monday afternoon. He says the Web site received 8.5 million hits in the first 90 minutes the system was up and running.
Fans booed as Alves made the announcement outside Coors Field.
"We're as frustrated and disappointed as they are," Alves said of the fans.
Alves says they will not be selling the tickets at Coors Field. He says their goal is to get the computer system up and running again so that they can resume online sales.
Hundreds of Rockies fans have e-mailed 9NEWS complaining they were not able to buy World Series tickets.
Of the hundreds of e-mail messages to 9Wants to Know has received, only three people were able to get tickets.
One man from Westminster says he went online at 10 a.m. and got four $250 Club Level tickets confirmed at 11 a.m.
The second person says he used two machines and got four $250 Club Level seats.
A third person, from Wyoming, was able to purchase two tickets.
The tickets sold were for Games 4 and 5.
All the other e-mailers either couldn't access the page, were knocked off the Web site, got permission to buy, but then were knocked off before they got a confirmation.
A spokesperson for Paciolan, a company that provides the infrastructure to allow the Rockies to sell tickets online, says they are experiencing problems with ticket sales and they are "trying to assess and resolve" those problems right now.
The mad rush for World Series seats got under way Monday as 60,000 tickets went up for sale, but only online.
Team officials have said their computers were ready to handle the expected crush of traffic, but some fans repeatedly got a message saying the Rockies' Web site couldn't be displayed.
About 20 people lined up in near-freezing temperatures outside the Denver Public Library before it opened in hopes of using public-access computers to score tickets.
"If you can't get tickets here, you're going to have to pay $200, $300 above face value," said Clayton McLeod, a 26-year-old heavy-machine operator who took the day off to try to buy tickets in the online-only sale.
Tickets officially went on sale at 10 a.m. but season ticket holders had the upper hand Sunday with a four hour window to purchase tickets.
Many Rockies fan had hoped Monday's sales would go better than Sunday's. Although the Rockies say Sunday's sale was a success, 9NEWS received various complaints and concerns from viewers who had difficulty accessing the site.
"Every time I tried to sign up an account, I got an error on my screen," said Rick Young. "My computer won't accept cookies."
Cookies identify users of a web page. Some computer security systems are not compatible with them. That's the problem Rockies fan Todd Lovrien encountered when trying to purchase tickets during Sunday's online sale.
"We tried every different way, and it kept throwing up this cookies thing," said Lovrien.
After removing all of the security settings that could block cookies, Lovrien tried again.
"I said 'Let me try one more time.' Then, all of a sudden, it came alive again."
That same tactic didn't work for Young. He was trying to create an account, so that he can purchase tickets when they go on sale to the general public Monday morning.
Rockies spokesperson Jay Alves says the organization didn't experience any problems with its system.
"To our knowledge, the only people that had the 'page cannot be displayed,' were IP addresses that were blocked due to suspicious/malicious activity to our website, during the last 24/48 hours," said Alves. "As an example, if several inquiries came from a single IP address, they were blocked."
Lovrien was eventually able to get through and purchase tickets. He says it took about ten minutes.
"I'll be stunned if I know anybody that gets tickets tomorrow," he said. "That's how fast they're going to go."
About 32,000 tickets were set aside for season ticket holders, players and sponsors. The rest, roughly 18,000, went on sale Monday at 10 a.m. online at coloradorockies.com.
Tickets were only sold on a game by game basis and ticket buys were limited to four tickets per game. Denver public libraries opened early Monday morning for people who do not have Internet access.
"There's only a certain amount of tickets available. There's a limited amount of seats and there's twice the amount of people trying to get those tickets," said computer consultant Patrick O'Fallon.
If you plan on being among the thousands who will log on to try and get tickets Monday, Fallon says there are some things you can do to increase your odds.
First, he says, make sure you use a computer with high-speed Internet.
Second, get familiar with the Colorado Rockies Web site before 10 a.m.
And finally, use multiple computers or have family and friends also log on.
World Series Schedule:
Game 1: Boston, Wednesday, 6 p.m.
Game 2: Boston, Thursday, 6 p.m.
Game 3: Denver, Saturday, 6 p.m.
Game 4: Denver, Sunday, 6 p.m.
Game 5*: Denver, Monday 10/29, Time TBD
Game 6*: Boston, Wed 10/31, Time TBD
Game 7* Boston, Thurs 11/1, Time TBD
Alves says virtually all the tickets are still available, due to a computer system malfunction. He says only several hundred tickets were sold.
"Right now we're shutting the system down .... We expect to be online at some point," Alves said.
According to Alves, the Colorado Rockies will announce new plans to sell the tickets at some point later Monday afternoon. He says the Web site received 8.5 million hits in the first 90 minutes the system was up and running.
Fans booed as Alves made the announcement outside Coors Field.
"We're as frustrated and disappointed as they are," Alves said of the fans.
Alves says they will not be selling the tickets at Coors Field. He says their goal is to get the computer system up and running again so that they can resume online sales.
Hundreds of Rockies fans have e-mailed 9NEWS complaining they were not able to buy World Series tickets.
Of the hundreds of e-mail messages to 9Wants to Know has received, only three people were able to get tickets.
One man from Westminster says he went online at 10 a.m. and got four $250 Club Level tickets confirmed at 11 a.m.
The second person says he used two machines and got four $250 Club Level seats.
A third person, from Wyoming, was able to purchase two tickets.
The tickets sold were for Games 4 and 5.
All the other e-mailers either couldn't access the page, were knocked off the Web site, got permission to buy, but then were knocked off before they got a confirmation.
A spokesperson for Paciolan, a company that provides the infrastructure to allow the Rockies to sell tickets online, says they are experiencing problems with ticket sales and they are "trying to assess and resolve" those problems right now.
The mad rush for World Series seats got under way Monday as 60,000 tickets went up for sale, but only online.
Team officials have said their computers were ready to handle the expected crush of traffic, but some fans repeatedly got a message saying the Rockies' Web site couldn't be displayed.
About 20 people lined up in near-freezing temperatures outside the Denver Public Library before it opened in hopes of using public-access computers to score tickets.
"If you can't get tickets here, you're going to have to pay $200, $300 above face value," said Clayton McLeod, a 26-year-old heavy-machine operator who took the day off to try to buy tickets in the online-only sale.
Tickets officially went on sale at 10 a.m. but season ticket holders had the upper hand Sunday with a four hour window to purchase tickets.
Many Rockies fan had hoped Monday's sales would go better than Sunday's. Although the Rockies say Sunday's sale was a success, 9NEWS received various complaints and concerns from viewers who had difficulty accessing the site.
"Every time I tried to sign up an account, I got an error on my screen," said Rick Young. "My computer won't accept cookies."
Cookies identify users of a web page. Some computer security systems are not compatible with them. That's the problem Rockies fan Todd Lovrien encountered when trying to purchase tickets during Sunday's online sale.
"We tried every different way, and it kept throwing up this cookies thing," said Lovrien.
After removing all of the security settings that could block cookies, Lovrien tried again.
"I said 'Let me try one more time.' Then, all of a sudden, it came alive again."
That same tactic didn't work for Young. He was trying to create an account, so that he can purchase tickets when they go on sale to the general public Monday morning.
Rockies spokesperson Jay Alves says the organization didn't experience any problems with its system.
"To our knowledge, the only people that had the 'page cannot be displayed,' were IP addresses that were blocked due to suspicious/malicious activity to our website, during the last 24/48 hours," said Alves. "As an example, if several inquiries came from a single IP address, they were blocked."
Lovrien was eventually able to get through and purchase tickets. He says it took about ten minutes.
"I'll be stunned if I know anybody that gets tickets tomorrow," he said. "That's how fast they're going to go."
About 32,000 tickets were set aside for season ticket holders, players and sponsors. The rest, roughly 18,000, went on sale Monday at 10 a.m. online at coloradorockies.com.
Tickets were only sold on a game by game basis and ticket buys were limited to four tickets per game. Denver public libraries opened early Monday morning for people who do not have Internet access.
"There's only a certain amount of tickets available. There's a limited amount of seats and there's twice the amount of people trying to get those tickets," said computer consultant Patrick O'Fallon.
If you plan on being among the thousands who will log on to try and get tickets Monday, Fallon says there are some things you can do to increase your odds.
First, he says, make sure you use a computer with high-speed Internet.
Second, get familiar with the Colorado Rockies Web site before 10 a.m.
And finally, use multiple computers or have family and friends also log on.
World Series Schedule:
Game 1: Boston, Wednesday, 6 p.m.
Game 2: Boston, Thursday, 6 p.m.
Game 3: Denver, Saturday, 6 p.m.
Game 4: Denver, Sunday, 6 p.m.
Game 5*: Denver, Monday 10/29, Time TBD
Game 6*: Boston, Wed 10/31, Time TBD
Game 7* Boston, Thurs 11/1, Time TBD
Friday, September 21, 2007
CEO protests Net cookies
The head of a leading security software vendor denounced the use of data files commonly used by Google Inc. and other Web sites to track user activity, saying such sites should seek permission ahead of time. John Thompson, chief executive of Symantec Corp. in Cupertino, Calif., said the files, known as cookies, "are just as much an invasion of privacy as someone peering in my bedroom window." Most major Web sites - including Symantec's - use cookies in some fashion. Thompson said people are sometimes unaware a cookie had been created or what gets done with any information collected, such as to target advertising.
T-Mobile to handle German iPhone service
Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile will be the exclusive carrier for Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Germany, where the gadget will go on sale Nov. 9. The iPhone, a combined cell phone-iPod media player that also can wirelessly access the Internet, will cost 399 euros ($553), including Germany's 19 percent value-added tax, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Hamid Akhavan, head of the T-Mobile International division. The announcement came a day after Apple said the iPhone would go on sale in Britain on Nov. 9 with service from mobile operator O2. It debuted in the United States on June 29, with service exclusively through ATT Inc.
T-Mobile to handle German iPhone service
Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile will be the exclusive carrier for Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Germany, where the gadget will go on sale Nov. 9. The iPhone, a combined cell phone-iPod media player that also can wirelessly access the Internet, will cost 399 euros ($553), including Germany's 19 percent value-added tax, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Hamid Akhavan, head of the T-Mobile International division. The announcement came a day after Apple said the iPhone would go on sale in Britain on Nov. 9 with service from mobile operator O2. It debuted in the United States on June 29, with service exclusively through ATT Inc.
Beware of cookies, Symantec exec warns
Cookies to collect Internet user data are a serious invasion of privacy, Symantec CEO John Thompson, quoted by an Associated Press report, said.
The Associated Press report also said the executive likened these cookies to "a peeping Tom."
The head of the security software vendor said he thought cookies were essentially spyware if people are unaware that a program has been downloaded on their machine to record the sites they visit and do not know what will be done with that information, the report said.
They "are just as much an invasion of privacy as someone peering in my bedroom window," he said.
Thompson was in Brussels to speak to EU regulators about Internet security and data privacy issues among others, the Associated Press report said.
He would not say if he thought the European Commission should flex its muscles on making cookies an on-demand option, merely saying "if the EU felt that was a problem, they might want to insert themselves here."
Thompson was further quoted as saying that he would want to know what the world's largest search engine Google would do with personal information if it takes over online ad tracker DoubleClick, a deal that is already stirring up data privacy rights advocates and companies concerned about the control the deal will give Google over online advertising and the personal information it collects from searches.
The Associated Press report also said the executive likened these cookies to "a peeping Tom."
The head of the security software vendor said he thought cookies were essentially spyware if people are unaware that a program has been downloaded on their machine to record the sites they visit and do not know what will be done with that information, the report said.
They "are just as much an invasion of privacy as someone peering in my bedroom window," he said.
Thompson was in Brussels to speak to EU regulators about Internet security and data privacy issues among others, the Associated Press report said.
He would not say if he thought the European Commission should flex its muscles on making cookies an on-demand option, merely saying "if the EU felt that was a problem, they might want to insert themselves here."
Thompson was further quoted as saying that he would want to know what the world's largest search engine Google would do with personal information if it takes over online ad tracker DoubleClick, a deal that is already stirring up data privacy rights advocates and companies concerned about the control the deal will give Google over online advertising and the personal information it collects from searches.
Digital peeping Toms
Email Print Normal font Large font Saved September 20, 2007 - 6:20AM
John Thompson, chief executive of Symantec, said the files, known as cookies, "are just as much an invasion of privacy as someone peering in my bedroom window."
Most major websites - including Symantec's - use cookies in some fashion.
Although some cookies are essential for remembering passwords and customising a user's web experience, they also can be used to create a profile of a user's online activities.
Thompson said people are sometimes unaware that a cookie had been created or what gets done with any information collected, such as to target advertising.
"I don't have an issue with people having cookies on their machine as long as I've been told one just got planted there," Thompson said. "I think there is an opt-in option here that should be available to everyone."
He questioned whether there is a "difference between a peeping Tom in the physical world and a cookie prying into my private affairs in the digital world."
Thompson was in Brussels to speak to EU regulators about such issues as Internet security and data privacy.
He would not say if he thought the European Commission should flex its muscles and require user permission for cookies, merely saying "if the EU felt that was a problem, they might want to insert themselves here."
Thompson said he would want to know what Google would do with personal information if it takes over online ad tracker DoubleClick - a deal that is already raising concerns about the control the deal would give Google over online advertising and data it collects about search terms.
Google has tried to soothe EU concerns, cutting the time it retains data from 24 months to 18 months.
The company also agreed to shorten the life span of its cookie, though it's not clear whether the move would do much to enhance privacy because the expiration date could get automatically extended when users revisit the search engine.
AP
John Thompson, chief executive of Symantec, said the files, known as cookies, "are just as much an invasion of privacy as someone peering in my bedroom window."
Most major websites - including Symantec's - use cookies in some fashion.
Although some cookies are essential for remembering passwords and customising a user's web experience, they also can be used to create a profile of a user's online activities.
Thompson said people are sometimes unaware that a cookie had been created or what gets done with any information collected, such as to target advertising.
"I don't have an issue with people having cookies on their machine as long as I've been told one just got planted there," Thompson said. "I think there is an opt-in option here that should be available to everyone."
He questioned whether there is a "difference between a peeping Tom in the physical world and a cookie prying into my private affairs in the digital world."
Thompson was in Brussels to speak to EU regulators about such issues as Internet security and data privacy.
He would not say if he thought the European Commission should flex its muscles and require user permission for cookies, merely saying "if the EU felt that was a problem, they might want to insert themselves here."
Thompson said he would want to know what Google would do with personal information if it takes over online ad tracker DoubleClick - a deal that is already raising concerns about the control the deal would give Google over online advertising and data it collects about search terms.
Google has tried to soothe EU concerns, cutting the time it retains data from 24 months to 18 months.
The company also agreed to shorten the life span of its cookie, though it's not clear whether the move would do much to enhance privacy because the expiration date could get automatically extended when users revisit the search engine.
AP
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Tackling attribution
There are other ways to tackle attribution than the myopic view of clicks and view-thru. What every business should do is define what would make the campaign a success, and then ask how they can measure that. Unfortunately many brands do this after the fact. They look at the available data that they can get from running a campaign online and what the system has measured and then decide whether the campaign is a success. I cannot stress enough that a more strategic approach is necessary.
You must go beyond the metrics that are easily provided by ad delivery systems. You have to develop a metric that gives you the data you need to be actionable about your business, instead of just lifting that report on the number of users that a campaign drove in views and clicks every week. The reported metric must be quickly actionable. Often, people seek to get at every little piece of data. They want to know everything. That is fine, but you will end up being mired in data atrophy. Does it take months for you to get an internal report through on the long-term value of your users? Then do not build it into your ongoing metric and actionable reporting. Measure that quarterly so you stay on track. But anything that you build as your optimization metric must be able to be pulled and reported, tracked and acted upon quickly. Enough data is enough.
Back to our phone example: Are you introducing a new phone brand that no one has ever heard of? You want consumers to get familiar with the features of the device and check out content on your site about it; and you want to tie the metric into priming them for purchase. In this case, PPTI (pages [of content viewed] per thousand impressions) could give you how much information a user who has seen an online ad, and been cookied, has absorbed on your site.
Think of it as a proxy for consumption of information -- priming consumers for conversion later in the cycle. You can optimize against that metric by modifying your creative and shifting your media plan. The trick is to use actionable metrics or even create ones for your business that go beyond the norm that you can optimize against.
Are you an online brand? A service? Do visits to site-per-consumer translate into income? You can use you own site data to track retention and the frequency with which users go to your site who have seen an ad. Are they coming back? How often? Layer in the cookie data and you have an exposed and a non-exposed group to track the differences in your user base. New visitors will have different performance characteristics from returning visitors. You can adapt your media plan and set target goals for the number of new users you acquire. Find an optimal balance of exposure.
How many times were your targets exposed to your online creative? More importantly, what combination of online creative were they exposed to and what creative is actually driving conversion?
You must go beyond the metrics that are easily provided by ad delivery systems. You have to develop a metric that gives you the data you need to be actionable about your business, instead of just lifting that report on the number of users that a campaign drove in views and clicks every week. The reported metric must be quickly actionable. Often, people seek to get at every little piece of data. They want to know everything. That is fine, but you will end up being mired in data atrophy. Does it take months for you to get an internal report through on the long-term value of your users? Then do not build it into your ongoing metric and actionable reporting. Measure that quarterly so you stay on track. But anything that you build as your optimization metric must be able to be pulled and reported, tracked and acted upon quickly. Enough data is enough.
Back to our phone example: Are you introducing a new phone brand that no one has ever heard of? You want consumers to get familiar with the features of the device and check out content on your site about it; and you want to tie the metric into priming them for purchase. In this case, PPTI (pages [of content viewed] per thousand impressions) could give you how much information a user who has seen an online ad, and been cookied, has absorbed on your site.
Think of it as a proxy for consumption of information -- priming consumers for conversion later in the cycle. You can optimize against that metric by modifying your creative and shifting your media plan. The trick is to use actionable metrics or even create ones for your business that go beyond the norm that you can optimize against.
Are you an online brand? A service? Do visits to site-per-consumer translate into income? You can use you own site data to track retention and the frequency with which users go to your site who have seen an ad. Are they coming back? How often? Layer in the cookie data and you have an exposed and a non-exposed group to track the differences in your user base. New visitors will have different performance characteristics from returning visitors. You can adapt your media plan and set target goals for the number of new users you acquire. Find an optimal balance of exposure.
How many times were your targets exposed to your online creative? More importantly, what combination of online creative were they exposed to and what creative is actually driving conversion?
The two-cookie conundrum
Online marketers have adopted offline methodologies and terminologies because it's the only universally understood way to justify being able to produce something that is richer, more communicative, more immersive and capable of driving a shift in consumer attitude. They couch it under the auspices of "It's a brand ad." They separate their campaigns into direct response and brand advertising.
I understand the need to speak a universal language with the folks wielding offline dollars, but the problem is that online marketers are still judging performance on cookie data. As a result, brand advertising gets reported on with the same metrics as the rest, and when cost is layered in, online tanks in comparison.
Granted, some marketers use two different cookies for these purposes, but that's akin to creating two admission lines at a club and separating pretty and ugly people into groups before they walk through the same door, but the pretty people pay four times as much for the privilege of getting in. In that environment, the last cookie in each group still wins, because consumers in the club still have just as much chance going home with an ugly person as a pretty one.
Artificial assignment is dangerous. The banner you view as your direct response ad may actually be your best brand ad. It may communicate most effectively what your brand actually is, not what you want your brand to be. Most brand marketers have a very different view of what their brand is than their consumers do. That is because clients operate on a day-to-day level with their brand. They know it. Live it. It's a closed universe. But your brand is not what you think it is. It's not what your agency -- or even your CEO -- thinks it is.
It's what your consumers think it is.
I understand the need to speak a universal language with the folks wielding offline dollars, but the problem is that online marketers are still judging performance on cookie data. As a result, brand advertising gets reported on with the same metrics as the rest, and when cost is layered in, online tanks in comparison.
Granted, some marketers use two different cookies for these purposes, but that's akin to creating two admission lines at a club and separating pretty and ugly people into groups before they walk through the same door, but the pretty people pay four times as much for the privilege of getting in. In that environment, the last cookie in each group still wins, because consumers in the club still have just as much chance going home with an ugly person as a pretty one.
Artificial assignment is dangerous. The banner you view as your direct response ad may actually be your best brand ad. It may communicate most effectively what your brand actually is, not what you want your brand to be. Most brand marketers have a very different view of what their brand is than their consumers do. That is because clients operate on a day-to-day level with their brand. They know it. Live it. It's a closed universe. But your brand is not what you think it is. It's not what your agency -- or even your CEO -- thinks it is.
It's what your consumers think it is.
Brand creative vs. direct response
Now that I've sufficiently disparaged the last cookie, let me pour more kerosene on the fire and say that there is no such thing as an online brand ad or an online direct response ad. Period. It does not make a difference. They are artificial constructs, hold-overs from traditional advertising.
"Huh?" you say. I know you want to skewer me for that one, but hear me out. There's logic to my madness and a point to all this.
The common view is that direct response creative is designed to elicit a measurable response, and that brand ads are designed to change attitudes. But if you think about it for just a moment, if your brand ad doesn't change attitudes that translate into eliciting a measurable response, it's not doing your brand one bit of good. You know that. So stop differentiating, unless it'll make you feel better knowing that everyone now has a positive view of your brand as you go out of business.
It's not necessarily your fault. The hold-over comes from direct response in offline, where ads are designed for trackability and specificity -- that offline direct mail piece with a special offer. A consumer gets it in the mail and responds. Bingo! It's tracked back to the source ID of mailing, catalog or coupon book… of an individual. A television infomercial running spot ZIP codes in PRIZM clusters results in a consumer picking up the phone. There is a conversion cycle to direct response offline. When someone responds, you know who it is. You figure out your cost to produce the offer, count the orders or layer in the conversion rate, and voila. X in, Y out and a bunch of Zs who you can now remarket to because you have their contact info.
But the brand's television commercial, radio or outdoor ad that just communicates "Phone. Sexy." has no individually trackable conversion cycle because you never know when an individual is exposed. You only have group data. Econometric modeling indicates media weights that increase responses, sales, etc… but it is in the meta. You don't know who it is.
That's where the fallacy of classifying things the same way in online advertising emerges. Online, you can track brand ads: who saw them and who responded. An individual (OK, an IP, stop being picky). You can also track how their attitudes change with exposed and non-exposed groups with as much, or more accuracy, than you can track with many direct-response programs offline. When you plug into the internet, your cookies are you. It's not the creative that defines whether something is a direct response ad or a brand ad. It is the medium and the trackability of individuals in that medium.
Do you see where I'm going with this yet? That is why attribution is crucial. Because you can track creative of various types, and impact, it is crucial that the combinations of exposures are better understood. So, the next time you hear someone say "It's a brand ad," when you ask about measurement, look at them calmly and say, "You're an idiot. Now let me tell you why."
"Huh?" you say. I know you want to skewer me for that one, but hear me out. There's logic to my madness and a point to all this.
The common view is that direct response creative is designed to elicit a measurable response, and that brand ads are designed to change attitudes. But if you think about it for just a moment, if your brand ad doesn't change attitudes that translate into eliciting a measurable response, it's not doing your brand one bit of good. You know that. So stop differentiating, unless it'll make you feel better knowing that everyone now has a positive view of your brand as you go out of business.
It's not necessarily your fault. The hold-over comes from direct response in offline, where ads are designed for trackability and specificity -- that offline direct mail piece with a special offer. A consumer gets it in the mail and responds. Bingo! It's tracked back to the source ID of mailing, catalog or coupon book… of an individual. A television infomercial running spot ZIP codes in PRIZM clusters results in a consumer picking up the phone. There is a conversion cycle to direct response offline. When someone responds, you know who it is. You figure out your cost to produce the offer, count the orders or layer in the conversion rate, and voila. X in, Y out and a bunch of Zs who you can now remarket to because you have their contact info.
But the brand's television commercial, radio or outdoor ad that just communicates "Phone. Sexy." has no individually trackable conversion cycle because you never know when an individual is exposed. You only have group data. Econometric modeling indicates media weights that increase responses, sales, etc… but it is in the meta. You don't know who it is.
That's where the fallacy of classifying things the same way in online advertising emerges. Online, you can track brand ads: who saw them and who responded. An individual (OK, an IP, stop being picky). You can also track how their attitudes change with exposed and non-exposed groups with as much, or more accuracy, than you can track with many direct-response programs offline. When you plug into the internet, your cookies are you. It's not the creative that defines whether something is a direct response ad or a brand ad. It is the medium and the trackability of individuals in that medium.
Do you see where I'm going with this yet? That is why attribution is crucial. Because you can track creative of various types, and impact, it is crucial that the combinations of exposures are better understood. So, the next time you hear someone say "It's a brand ad," when you ask about measurement, look at them calmly and say, "You're an idiot. Now let me tell you why."
How heavy are your cookies?
You're driving and pass a billboard for that new phone. You probably should be concentrating on driving, but there it is: a beautiful woman and that phone. You don't even notice that you nearly drove the car next to you into the guard rail. It's OK, they didn't notice either, because they were talking to someone on that phone. You park your car, and there she is again on that bus shelter with that phone. You get your mail and walk inside. Junk mail, bill, bill, junk mail, junk mail… hmmm… that phone. Pause. More junk mail, a letter from the IRS. Long pause. More junk mail. Trash. You're left with four pieces of mail, one of which you are not opening. You go online to pay your bills, and bam, there's a banner ad with that phone. Click.
What caused that conversion? Everything. You know that. So why don't you view your online marketing efforts the same way?
You have eight different online campaigns running in addition to your SEM -- a rich media banner, an interstitial, a video running on Google's display network, a homepage takeover, an email campaign and four different flash banners.
Your consumer is reading their news online. He sees a banner. He gets a cookie. He goes to another site to check out baseball scores. He sees a rich media banner -- cookie. He sees another banner -- another cookie. He goes to his favorite site. Homepage takeover -- cookie. He gets a link from a friend and checks it out. He sees another banner -- another cookie. He finally types in your URL. Bingo! Site visit!
So, what caused that conversion? Again, you know that it's the mass, and again, why is almost every online marketer looking at their online creative in isolation? It's the cookies. Every cookie replaces every other cookie before it. The only cookie you see when someone lands at your site is from that banner execution you hate, so you sit in weekly meeting after weekly meeting with your agency going over the same mind-numbing creative performance matrix. And then? You report it up. The last cookie wins. Ugh.
In this "last cookie wins" environment, we all lose. As long as it exists, partially savvy marketers who optimize their campaigns based on cookie metrics will naturally gravitate to those elements that have the most impression weight against them, like that hateful banner. Smaller campaigns can get drowned out by larger ones. High volumes of impressions in one place can steal all the cookies from your smaller "test" campaigns, leaving them with paltry performance.
Shouldn't a cookie for your homepage-takeover carry more significant weight than your lowly skyscraper? Shouldn't video do the same? You know that the little online button has less influence than the homepage takeover, but if they both drop a cookie, they are viewed by your tracking system as the same -- they have the same "weight." Moreover, the weight of the cookie combined with the number of impressions against it acts like myriad cookie thieves. It is why when you run your homepage takeover or very immersive rich media creative, the performance of your lowly banners seems to improve. It's not the creative or the placement that are improving; it's just that they are stealing the good will of other online advertising.
What caused that conversion? Everything. You know that. So why don't you view your online marketing efforts the same way?
You have eight different online campaigns running in addition to your SEM -- a rich media banner, an interstitial, a video running on Google's display network, a homepage takeover, an email campaign and four different flash banners.
Your consumer is reading their news online. He sees a banner. He gets a cookie. He goes to another site to check out baseball scores. He sees a rich media banner -- cookie. He sees another banner -- another cookie. He goes to his favorite site. Homepage takeover -- cookie. He gets a link from a friend and checks it out. He sees another banner -- another cookie. He finally types in your URL. Bingo! Site visit!
So, what caused that conversion? Again, you know that it's the mass, and again, why is almost every online marketer looking at their online creative in isolation? It's the cookies. Every cookie replaces every other cookie before it. The only cookie you see when someone lands at your site is from that banner execution you hate, so you sit in weekly meeting after weekly meeting with your agency going over the same mind-numbing creative performance matrix. And then? You report it up. The last cookie wins. Ugh.
In this "last cookie wins" environment, we all lose. As long as it exists, partially savvy marketers who optimize their campaigns based on cookie metrics will naturally gravitate to those elements that have the most impression weight against them, like that hateful banner. Smaller campaigns can get drowned out by larger ones. High volumes of impressions in one place can steal all the cookies from your smaller "test" campaigns, leaving them with paltry performance.
Shouldn't a cookie for your homepage-takeover carry more significant weight than your lowly skyscraper? Shouldn't video do the same? You know that the little online button has less influence than the homepage takeover, but if they both drop a cookie, they are viewed by your tracking system as the same -- they have the same "weight." Moreover, the weight of the cookie combined with the number of impressions against it acts like myriad cookie thieves. It is why when you run your homepage takeover or very immersive rich media creative, the performance of your lowly banners seems to improve. It's not the creative or the placement that are improving; it's just that they are stealing the good will of other online advertising.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Google Testing Privacy-Enhanced Ad Serving
New privacy practices announced by Google will get a workout in a test of third-party ad serving technology.
Google announced its ad-serving tests will employ cookies with shorter expiration dates, and anonymization of data after 18 months. The company formulated these new policies in response to criticism over search privacy in the US and the European Union.
They will be tested in Google's latest round of ad experimentation. The company provided more details on the official Google blog:
In our ad-serving tests, we're introducing an opt-out mechanism so people can opt out of the test ad-serving cookie if they wish. In addition, we’re going to experiment with ways the industry could provide improved transparency for consumers and providing users with additional controls over the data gathered by ad servers. Some of the ideas we're exploring include:
• using "crumbled" cookies, so that the data typically associated with one unique identifying number or "cookie ID" will be broken up among multiple different cookies and diffuse the ad history of individual users;
• providing better forms of notice within ads, to help users understand who is serving the ads they see, and what data is being collected; and
• giving users the ability to provide feedback to us about the ads they like and don't like.
Privacy issues have become a front and center topic in Google's bid to purchase third-party ad server DoubleClick. Complaints from privacy advocates have led to the US Government taking an interest in the acquisition and the potential for one company to control personal information about millions of Internet users.
Proving to Congress and the FTC that the buy won't give Google a monopoly in the online advertising market has to happen to quell antitrust concerns. It's a challenge that they will try to address, with this test as part of the process.
Google announced its ad-serving tests will employ cookies with shorter expiration dates, and anonymization of data after 18 months. The company formulated these new policies in response to criticism over search privacy in the US and the European Union.
They will be tested in Google's latest round of ad experimentation. The company provided more details on the official Google blog:
In our ad-serving tests, we're introducing an opt-out mechanism so people can opt out of the test ad-serving cookie if they wish. In addition, we’re going to experiment with ways the industry could provide improved transparency for consumers and providing users with additional controls over the data gathered by ad servers. Some of the ideas we're exploring include:
• using "crumbled" cookies, so that the data typically associated with one unique identifying number or "cookie ID" will be broken up among multiple different cookies and diffuse the ad history of individual users;
• providing better forms of notice within ads, to help users understand who is serving the ads they see, and what data is being collected; and
• giving users the ability to provide feedback to us about the ads they like and don't like.
Privacy issues have become a front and center topic in Google's bid to purchase third-party ad server DoubleClick. Complaints from privacy advocates have led to the US Government taking an interest in the acquisition and the potential for one company to control personal information about millions of Internet users.
Proving to Congress and the FTC that the buy won't give Google a monopoly in the online advertising market has to happen to quell antitrust concerns. It's a challenge that they will try to address, with this test as part of the process.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Hackers bite into 'cookies' to plunder user data
Las Vegas - Hackers and computer security specialists gathered in Las Vegas on Friday took aim at popular social networking websites, exposing ways to plunder data from software "cookies" used to track users.
Revelations made at an international gathering of hackers dubbed DefCon come as Internet rivals Google, Microsoft, and Ask acquire firms that rely on cookies to better target money-making online ads.
"Websites could easily fix the problem by encrypting cookies," Errata Security chief executive Robert Graham said.
Revelations made at an international gathering of hackers dubbed DefCon come as Internet rivals Google, Microsoft, and Ask acquire firms that rely on cookies to better target money-making online ads.
"Websites could easily fix the problem by encrypting cookies," Errata Security chief executive Robert Graham said.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Google miffed over leaked Autonomy sales doc26th July 2007
By Kevin Murphy
A Google executive has accused rival Autonomy of spreading untruths about Google's enterprise search products to potential customers. The two companies are disputing the contents of a leaked sales document that Google says shows Autonomy making "downright fabrications" about its enterprise search software.
A Google executive said in a company blog that an Autonomy document, which he refers to as a white paper, "would lead a customer or prospect to believe a number of things about Google that are just fundamentally not true."
Autonomy, in a statement sent to Computer Business Review, said the paper in question was "outdated" and "intended for internal use", but went on to reiterate some of the paper's claims that Google's enterprise search products have "considerable weakness".
The paper itself appears to be a document used by Autonomy's salespeople and resellers when customer prospects ask about Google Appliance and Google Mini. It was published online by a Korean reseller, without Autonomy's permission, according to Autonomy.
It claims that the Appliances are "simple keyword search engines contained within a black box" that lack relevancy, are insecure, and are often unable to index data found in content management systems and databases.
Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, refuted five of the document's claims in a blog posting entitled "You can't believe everything you read".
"The paper would lead a customer or prospect to believe a number of things about Google that are just fundamentally not true," he wrote. "Inaccuracies about our enterprise ranking algorithms, and downright fabrications about our security and access control capabilities."
Claims that Google Appliance "relies" on web links to determine relevancy are "false and misleading", Glotzbach wrote. "Google's enterprise search algorithms rely on hundreds of factors, only one of which is PageRank," he wrote.
He added that claims that Google cannot tie into other enterprise systems out of the box are wrong, and that "perhaps the most egregious statement in the whole document" is that Google's appliances wantonly index documents without regard for security.
Autonomy said that the paper was published internally "over a year and a half ago", and that it is constantly revised with new information as products are updated.
In fact, the paper, a copy of which we managed to extract from Google's web cache after the Korean reseller deleted it, contains a few quotes from a Financial Times article dated June 12 2006, so it appears to be a little more recent than Autonomy claims.
Autonomy also stuck to its guns to a certain extent, in a statement: "Many of the areas referenced such as relevancy, security and repository access are still those of [Google's] considerable weakness".
"Despite Google's brand momentum and its presence in the market for three years, we see it in less than 1% of all deals we do, as large enterprise customers are very educated and know the difference," Autonomy said.
The Autonomy sales document contains a 2006 quote from Gartner analyst Whit Andrews that may back up that claim: "Bottom line - Is Google something that should be considered for an enterprise search project. Yes, it should be. Should it always make it to the last round of vendors before the final one is selected? Probably not."
A Google executive has accused rival Autonomy of spreading untruths about Google's enterprise search products to potential customers. The two companies are disputing the contents of a leaked sales document that Google says shows Autonomy making "downright fabrications" about its enterprise search software.
A Google executive said in a company blog that an Autonomy document, which he refers to as a white paper, "would lead a customer or prospect to believe a number of things about Google that are just fundamentally not true."
Autonomy, in a statement sent to Computer Business Review, said the paper in question was "outdated" and "intended for internal use", but went on to reiterate some of the paper's claims that Google's enterprise search products have "considerable weakness".
The paper itself appears to be a document used by Autonomy's salespeople and resellers when customer prospects ask about Google Appliance and Google Mini. It was published online by a Korean reseller, without Autonomy's permission, according to Autonomy.
It claims that the Appliances are "simple keyword search engines contained within a black box" that lack relevancy, are insecure, and are often unable to index data found in content management systems and databases.
Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, refuted five of the document's claims in a blog posting entitled "You can't believe everything you read".
"The paper would lead a customer or prospect to believe a number of things about Google that are just fundamentally not true," he wrote. "Inaccuracies about our enterprise ranking algorithms, and downright fabrications about our security and access control capabilities."
Claims that Google Appliance "relies" on web links to determine relevancy are "false and misleading", Glotzbach wrote. "Google's enterprise search algorithms rely on hundreds of factors, only one of which is PageRank," he wrote.
He added that claims that Google cannot tie into other enterprise systems out of the box are wrong, and that "perhaps the most egregious statement in the whole document" is that Google's appliances wantonly index documents without regard for security.
Autonomy said that the paper was published internally "over a year and a half ago", and that it is constantly revised with new information as products are updated.
In fact, the paper, a copy of which we managed to extract from Google's web cache after the Korean reseller deleted it, contains a few quotes from a Financial Times article dated June 12 2006, so it appears to be a little more recent than Autonomy claims.
Autonomy also stuck to its guns to a certain extent, in a statement: "Many of the areas referenced such as relevancy, security and repository access are still those of [Google's] considerable weakness".
"Despite Google's brand momentum and its presence in the market for three years, we see it in less than 1% of all deals we do, as large enterprise customers are very educated and know the difference," Autonomy said.
The Autonomy sales document contains a 2006 quote from Gartner analyst Whit Andrews that may back up that claim: "Bottom line - Is Google something that should be considered for an enterprise search project. Yes, it should be. Should it always make it to the last round of vendors before the final one is selected? Probably not."
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Canadian ISVs Digest Google’s Cookie Policy
Google’s decision to issue cookies with an automatic two-year expiry for users who don’t return to the search site may not be an earth-shattering move, but it’s the company’s recognition of a privacy issue that really counts, an expert said.
The cookies act as tracking files for user search preferences, such as keywords, primary language, number of results per page, and options to filter out sexually explicit websites. The cookies, which are installed on users’ computers, are currently subject to a blanket expiry date of 2038.
Although it’s "about time" that Google made such a change, the two-year time frame for storing user preference data is probably still too long, said David Fewer, staff counsel at Ottawa, Ontario-based Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).
However, the bigger issue, he added, is the acknowledgment by the company of a larger underlying matter. "Google’s move here is a recognition that they’ve got to do more."
Google’s announcement isn’t terribly significant, according to Michael McDerment, CEO of Toronto-based Freshbooks, an online invoicing and time-tracking service.
"If no one’s using the cookies for two years, there’s no data being collected anyway, and chances are the computer that created those cookies is obsolete," he said. "It says nothing, to be honest, as far as I can tell."
McDerment thinks Google’s announcement is not all that meaningful, and is garnering interest due to the company’s renown. "These sound like very standard things, nothing to write home about."
But given the advent of Web 2.0 and vendor-hosted services, there should be an industry standard that’s compliant with the law to guide data-retention time frames, said Fewer. "Surprisingly, in this day and age we’re still talking about that being something that industries aren’t doing a good job [at]."
But it’s not that simple, he said: "Does that mean two years, two months, two days if you’re talking about a particular term? It will depend on what’s fair in the circumstances."
McDerment agreed that it’s difficult to establish a blanket standard for user data retention across industries, as it "really depends on what you use the cookie for. It varies from use case to use case."
Freshbooks does not use cookies to store user data, he said. Instead, it uses them to manage Web session log-ins, a common use for such files. "If you don’t refresh your server in two hours, we log you out."
On the enterprise front, companies concerned about privacy probably already address the issue of data-tracking cookies, said Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO of Devshop, an Ottawa-based provider of a Web-based software project management tool.
They do so by way of policies, with tools that automatically delete cookies, or they choose to turn off the cookies by default upon browser installation, he said.
Anyhow, Fitzpatrick doesn’t see data-tracking cookies as that big a deal. "People realize cookies aren’t really that bad to begin with, and if you think they are, you have the right to delete them anytime you want."
Fewer thinks it really boils down to whether vendors are ensuring the technologies they develop operate fair information-gathering practices.
He recommends vendors be guided by two principles when designing tools that have an impact on consumer privacy: Identify the required data, and collect only that data. "What’s the point of collecting ubiquitous information, and what’s the point of keeping it?"
And be transparent with the data-collection process: "If you’re not breaking the law, then why not be transparent in what you’re doing?"
The cookies act as tracking files for user search preferences, such as keywords, primary language, number of results per page, and options to filter out sexually explicit websites. The cookies, which are installed on users’ computers, are currently subject to a blanket expiry date of 2038.
Although it’s "about time" that Google made such a change, the two-year time frame for storing user preference data is probably still too long, said David Fewer, staff counsel at Ottawa, Ontario-based Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).
However, the bigger issue, he added, is the acknowledgment by the company of a larger underlying matter. "Google’s move here is a recognition that they’ve got to do more."
Google’s announcement isn’t terribly significant, according to Michael McDerment, CEO of Toronto-based Freshbooks, an online invoicing and time-tracking service.
"If no one’s using the cookies for two years, there’s no data being collected anyway, and chances are the computer that created those cookies is obsolete," he said. "It says nothing, to be honest, as far as I can tell."
McDerment thinks Google’s announcement is not all that meaningful, and is garnering interest due to the company’s renown. "These sound like very standard things, nothing to write home about."
But given the advent of Web 2.0 and vendor-hosted services, there should be an industry standard that’s compliant with the law to guide data-retention time frames, said Fewer. "Surprisingly, in this day and age we’re still talking about that being something that industries aren’t doing a good job [at]."
But it’s not that simple, he said: "Does that mean two years, two months, two days if you’re talking about a particular term? It will depend on what’s fair in the circumstances."
McDerment agreed that it’s difficult to establish a blanket standard for user data retention across industries, as it "really depends on what you use the cookie for. It varies from use case to use case."
Freshbooks does not use cookies to store user data, he said. Instead, it uses them to manage Web session log-ins, a common use for such files. "If you don’t refresh your server in two hours, we log you out."
On the enterprise front, companies concerned about privacy probably already address the issue of data-tracking cookies, said Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO of Devshop, an Ottawa-based provider of a Web-based software project management tool.
They do so by way of policies, with tools that automatically delete cookies, or they choose to turn off the cookies by default upon browser installation, he said.
Anyhow, Fitzpatrick doesn’t see data-tracking cookies as that big a deal. "People realize cookies aren’t really that bad to begin with, and if you think they are, you have the right to delete them anytime you want."
Fewer thinks it really boils down to whether vendors are ensuring the technologies they develop operate fair information-gathering practices.
He recommends vendors be guided by two principles when designing tools that have an impact on consumer privacy: Identify the required data, and collect only that data. "What’s the point of collecting ubiquitous information, and what’s the point of keeping it?"
And be transparent with the data-collection process: "If you’re not breaking the law, then why not be transparent in what you’re doing?"
Monday, July 23, 2007
Search engines race to update privacy policies
Microsoft and Yahoo are the latest to announce limits on how long they will keep Web search data.
The major search engines are racing to outdo each other in updating their data retention policies in an attempt to assuage concerns that they keep consumer search data too long.
The latest to go public with their moves are Microsoft and Yahoo.
Microsoft and Ask.com also are proposing an industry effort to create voluntary standards for protecting consumer privacy with search and online ads, a move that is likely spurred by Google's plan to acquire a leader in the online ad market.
Microsoft is set to announce on Monday plans to permanently remove the Internet Protocol address and other identifying data associated with Web searches after 18 months unless the searcher wants the information stored for longer. The company will also store search terms separately from account information that personally identifies a user, such as name, e-mail address and phone number, gathered as part of other Microsoft services.
In addition, Microsoft is promising that it will give people the ability to opt out of behavioral ad targeting it offers on third-party Web sites and it will allow people to search and surf its Web sites without being associated with a personal and unique identifier used for such ad targeting.
Meanwhile, Yahoo is vowing to remove portions of IP addresses and personally identifiable cookie IDs within 13 months except when users want the data retained for longer or when the company is required to retain it for law enforcement or legal processes, said Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan.
Cookies are small files stored on a computer so that the computer can be recognized when it revisits Web sites, enabling the site to remember the user's preferences for things like e-commerce and sites that require a log-in.
The news comes days after changes at Ask and Google. On Thursday, Ask said it would allow people to search anonymously and would not retain a user's Web search history at all if the searcher didn't want it to. Searchers will be able to change their preferences using a new AskEraser tool, which will reside on the Ask servers and will work with all the major operating systems. Ask said it will retain the search log data for 18 months for people who don't want to be anonymous and then it will disassociate the search terms from the IP address.
Also last week, Google said it would have cookies expire after two years instead of 2038, although for anyone who visits Google even once in the next two years, the cookie expiration date will be extended another two years.
In March, Google said it would start anonymizing the final eight bits of the IP address and the cookie data after somewhere between 18 months and 24 months, unless legally required to retain the data for longer. That would make it much harder to identify the specific computers used for searches.
The risks associated with retaining search data were illustrated last year when AOL inadvertently exposed the searches of more than 650,000 users. The New York Times was able to discover the identity of at least one of the users, highlighting the risks associated with retaining search data logs.
Microsoft and Ask also said they would work together and are asking other companies and organizations to join them in creating industry guidelines for protecting consumer privacy in the areas of search and online advertising. They said they would provide an update on the effort in September.
The moves come amid discussion in the industry over privacy concerns related to Google's proposed $3.1 billion of online ad provider DoubleClick. Privacy advocates have questioned the deal; Microsoft opposes it on antitrust grounds; and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is looking into it.
"It's a topical area right now, and (the Google-DoubleClick plan) had some influence on us looking at this" now, said Brendon Lynch, director of privacy strategy at Microsoft. "We believe privacy is a very important aspect for our business going forward."
But where do Yahoo and Google stand on the self-regulation effort? Neither company would give a straight answer to that question.
"We're certainly open to having conversations about technical issues, but we don't think this is the right time to participate in that," said Yahoo's Cullinan, without elaborating.
A Google spokeswoman provided this statement: "Our goal is to improve privacy protection and data security for all Internet users by continuing to innovate in the area of privacy."
The major search engines are racing to outdo each other in updating their data retention policies in an attempt to assuage concerns that they keep consumer search data too long.
The latest to go public with their moves are Microsoft and Yahoo.
Microsoft and Ask.com also are proposing an industry effort to create voluntary standards for protecting consumer privacy with search and online ads, a move that is likely spurred by Google's plan to acquire a leader in the online ad market.
Microsoft is set to announce on Monday plans to permanently remove the Internet Protocol address and other identifying data associated with Web searches after 18 months unless the searcher wants the information stored for longer. The company will also store search terms separately from account information that personally identifies a user, such as name, e-mail address and phone number, gathered as part of other Microsoft services.
In addition, Microsoft is promising that it will give people the ability to opt out of behavioral ad targeting it offers on third-party Web sites and it will allow people to search and surf its Web sites without being associated with a personal and unique identifier used for such ad targeting.
Meanwhile, Yahoo is vowing to remove portions of IP addresses and personally identifiable cookie IDs within 13 months except when users want the data retained for longer or when the company is required to retain it for law enforcement or legal processes, said Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan.
Cookies are small files stored on a computer so that the computer can be recognized when it revisits Web sites, enabling the site to remember the user's preferences for things like e-commerce and sites that require a log-in.
The news comes days after changes at Ask and Google. On Thursday, Ask said it would allow people to search anonymously and would not retain a user's Web search history at all if the searcher didn't want it to. Searchers will be able to change their preferences using a new AskEraser tool, which will reside on the Ask servers and will work with all the major operating systems. Ask said it will retain the search log data for 18 months for people who don't want to be anonymous and then it will disassociate the search terms from the IP address.
Also last week, Google said it would have cookies expire after two years instead of 2038, although for anyone who visits Google even once in the next two years, the cookie expiration date will be extended another two years.
In March, Google said it would start anonymizing the final eight bits of the IP address and the cookie data after somewhere between 18 months and 24 months, unless legally required to retain the data for longer. That would make it much harder to identify the specific computers used for searches.
The risks associated with retaining search data were illustrated last year when AOL inadvertently exposed the searches of more than 650,000 users. The New York Times was able to discover the identity of at least one of the users, highlighting the risks associated with retaining search data logs.
Microsoft and Ask also said they would work together and are asking other companies and organizations to join them in creating industry guidelines for protecting consumer privacy in the areas of search and online advertising. They said they would provide an update on the effort in September.
The moves come amid discussion in the industry over privacy concerns related to Google's proposed $3.1 billion of online ad provider DoubleClick. Privacy advocates have questioned the deal; Microsoft opposes it on antitrust grounds; and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is looking into it.
"It's a topical area right now, and (the Google-DoubleClick plan) had some influence on us looking at this" now, said Brendon Lynch, director of privacy strategy at Microsoft. "We believe privacy is a very important aspect for our business going forward."
But where do Yahoo and Google stand on the self-regulation effort? Neither company would give a straight answer to that question.
"We're certainly open to having conversations about technical issues, but we don't think this is the right time to participate in that," said Yahoo's Cullinan, without elaborating.
A Google spokeswoman provided this statement: "Our goal is to improve privacy protection and data security for all Internet users by continuing to innovate in the area of privacy."
Who's worse? Google or Microsoft
As Google faces mounting criticism over its data- retention practices, rivals Microsoft, Ask and Yahoo are touting improvements to their own privacy policies.
Microsoft says it will only hold onto data that ties users' IP addresses to their search queries for 18 months. The company will let users opt out of its behavioral targeting programs, which would otherwise send them ads based on their Web-surfing history. Yahoo said it will anonymize the search logs after 13 months.
The moves take aim at a major Google vulnerability. The company, currently hoping to purchase DoubleClick, must first persuade the FTC to OK the deal. But consumer privacy groups have been pushing hard for reassurance that Google won't use DoubleClick's data about people's Web-surfing to compile detailed user profiles.
The European Union also has made clear it isn't happy with Google's previous record-keeping practices, specifically, its history of storing search queries and IP logs. Google recently said it will unbundle the queries from IP addresses after 18 months, but even this is long enough for damage to be done to users.
Consider: AOL's "Data Vasquez," in which the company released hundreds of thousands of users' search logs that were less than six months old. While AOL said it had made IP addresses anonymous, the queries themselves revealed people's identities.
Microsoft says it will only hold onto data that ties users' IP addresses to their search queries for 18 months. The company will let users opt out of its behavioral targeting programs, which would otherwise send them ads based on their Web-surfing history. Yahoo said it will anonymize the search logs after 13 months.
The moves take aim at a major Google vulnerability. The company, currently hoping to purchase DoubleClick, must first persuade the FTC to OK the deal. But consumer privacy groups have been pushing hard for reassurance that Google won't use DoubleClick's data about people's Web-surfing to compile detailed user profiles.
The European Union also has made clear it isn't happy with Google's previous record-keeping practices, specifically, its history of storing search queries and IP logs. Google recently said it will unbundle the queries from IP addresses after 18 months, but even this is long enough for damage to be done to users.
Consider: AOL's "Data Vasquez," in which the company released hundreds of thousands of users' search logs that were less than six months old. While AOL said it had made IP addresses anonymous, the queries themselves revealed people's identities.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Google and cookies
Google is shortening the life span of its "cookie" data-tracking file. Under a new policy, the cookies will expire automatically after two years, instead of in 2038, as is currently the case.
However, the two-year period could get extended automatically when users revisit Google's search engine, so one might have to avoid Google for a full two years to see the cookie automatically expire.
"It sounds like it changes things . . . but the reality of how people use computers, I don't think it in reality changes anything substantially," said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit advocacy group.
-- Associated Press
All about people
A search engine startup promises to deliver more targeted results on queries about people, whether it's the guy from the bar last night or Paris Hilton.
The idea is to help you avoid sorting through the thousands of results delivered by the major Internet search companies.
The site, called Spock, is gaining 30,000 members per week in an invitation-only "beta" test mode. It will launch within a month with a searchable database of 100 million people. The site relies on public data.
-- Associated Press
All that glitters
Samsung Electronics Co. will make an 18-carat gold-plated mobile phone in China to mark next year's Olympics in Beijing.
The sleek-looking phone is mostly deep black in color, with the gold placed in the trim along the sides and covering the bottom half of its back.
Price and launch date have yet to be set, Samsung said.
-- Associated Press
However, the two-year period could get extended automatically when users revisit Google's search engine, so one might have to avoid Google for a full two years to see the cookie automatically expire.
"It sounds like it changes things . . . but the reality of how people use computers, I don't think it in reality changes anything substantially," said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit advocacy group.
-- Associated Press
All about people
A search engine startup promises to deliver more targeted results on queries about people, whether it's the guy from the bar last night or Paris Hilton.
The idea is to help you avoid sorting through the thousands of results delivered by the major Internet search companies.
The site, called Spock, is gaining 30,000 members per week in an invitation-only "beta" test mode. It will launch within a month with a searchable database of 100 million people. The site relies on public data.
-- Associated Press
All that glitters
Samsung Electronics Co. will make an 18-carat gold-plated mobile phone in China to mark next year's Olympics in Beijing.
The sleek-looking phone is mostly deep black in color, with the gold placed in the trim along the sides and covering the bottom half of its back.
Price and launch date have yet to be set, Samsung said.
-- Associated Press
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Why delete your cookies?
Why not delete your cookies?
Are you aware that when using Internet Explorer and other browsers to surf the internet, your surfing history and habits can easily be viewed and tracked by third partys by your cookies.
Technology enables others to see and track all the sites you've visited! Deleting your cookies, downloaded internet files and images, prevents others from tracking your behavior.
There are plenty of reasons you might want to delete your cookies., and you should not trust all cookie removal software therefore you may have to delete cookies manually.
Cookies may contain credit card information and have passwords!
Deleting cookies can improve computer preformance especially on older machines
Almost 73.5% of all forturne 1000 companies admit they "record and review their employees' communications and activities on the job." This includes cookies.
Advertisers may track and record your movements and purchases!
Your computer may contain hidden or temporary Internet files left behind from surfing the Web. Frequently as you surf the Web, sites that you visit "push" information onto your computer without you knowing it and without your approval. These files, if left on your computer, may automatically spawn other objectionable Web sites or transmit personal information without your consent.
Things every Web site can find out about you
Thought your visit was anonymous? Think again. The Internet gives an image of anonymity, but dig a little deeper and you'll find it's a false front.
Almost all Internet sites, and certainly the bigger ones, collect information about their visitors. It's logged by the site server that sends Web pages to your computer, and the data is referred to as Web server logs or weblogs. You'll be surprised how much information your disloyal computer passes over to the site you're visiting. Nothing as serious as your name or email address, but probably much more than you'd expect. Here are the main items:
IP address
This is your "street address" for the Internet, it's a string of numbers that identify exactly where you are in the huge ever-changing mass of networks that make up the Internet. It has to be passed to the site so that it knows where to send the pages that you've requested.
The bad news is that your IP address is quite distinctive. It's easy to tell from the numbers which country you're connecting from and which Internet Service Provider you're using. The good news is that most ISPs use a rolling address system, so you get a different address each time you log on to the Internet (from a range held by your ISP). Though if you're using a computer on an office network it might have its own IP address that never changes.
Ultimately, you can be tracked down from your IP address. Even if it's a rolling address, your ISP keeps records of who is using any address at any given time. In the space of a few seconds they can link any address with a specific user. That's you. But naturally they're reluctant to do it, even for the police.
If you use a free ISP account that didn't need registration, the detail comes from your phone line. These accounts only work with "line recognition", which means the ISP receives your phone number when you log on. So however you access the Internet, you can be traced. The IP address collected by the site server for its records can be linked directly either to you or to your phone line.
Referring page
Many sites also collect referring page information. Your computer obviously knows where it's just come from, and the shameless electronic traitor freely passes this information on to the next site. "This is the site we arrived from," it says. Hey, who's in control here?
Browser and operating system
Your computer also tells its electronic friend at the other end what kind of browser you're using, including the version number, and what kind of operating system you have - Windows, Mac, Unix, whatever.
Screen details
Although not all computers do this, many also tell the site server what size screen you have (in pixels, not inches) and what kind of colour resolution you're using - 256, 16 bit, 24 bit. Is there no end to their treachery?
Pages viewed
And finally, without the assistance of your computer, the site server records everywhere you go on the site and how long you stay on each page.
So, these are just some of the reasons to delete your cookies.
Are you aware that when using Internet Explorer and other browsers to surf the internet, your surfing history and habits can easily be viewed and tracked by third partys by your cookies.
Technology enables others to see and track all the sites you've visited! Deleting your cookies, downloaded internet files and images, prevents others from tracking your behavior.
There are plenty of reasons you might want to delete your cookies., and you should not trust all cookie removal software therefore you may have to delete cookies manually.
Cookies may contain credit card information and have passwords!
Deleting cookies can improve computer preformance especially on older machines
Almost 73.5% of all forturne 1000 companies admit they "record and review their employees' communications and activities on the job." This includes cookies.
Advertisers may track and record your movements and purchases!
Your computer may contain hidden or temporary Internet files left behind from surfing the Web. Frequently as you surf the Web, sites that you visit "push" information onto your computer without you knowing it and without your approval. These files, if left on your computer, may automatically spawn other objectionable Web sites or transmit personal information without your consent.
Things every Web site can find out about you
Thought your visit was anonymous? Think again. The Internet gives an image of anonymity, but dig a little deeper and you'll find it's a false front.
Almost all Internet sites, and certainly the bigger ones, collect information about their visitors. It's logged by the site server that sends Web pages to your computer, and the data is referred to as Web server logs or weblogs. You'll be surprised how much information your disloyal computer passes over to the site you're visiting. Nothing as serious as your name or email address, but probably much more than you'd expect. Here are the main items:
IP address
This is your "street address" for the Internet, it's a string of numbers that identify exactly where you are in the huge ever-changing mass of networks that make up the Internet. It has to be passed to the site so that it knows where to send the pages that you've requested.
The bad news is that your IP address is quite distinctive. It's easy to tell from the numbers which country you're connecting from and which Internet Service Provider you're using. The good news is that most ISPs use a rolling address system, so you get a different address each time you log on to the Internet (from a range held by your ISP). Though if you're using a computer on an office network it might have its own IP address that never changes.
Ultimately, you can be tracked down from your IP address. Even if it's a rolling address, your ISP keeps records of who is using any address at any given time. In the space of a few seconds they can link any address with a specific user. That's you. But naturally they're reluctant to do it, even for the police.
If you use a free ISP account that didn't need registration, the detail comes from your phone line. These accounts only work with "line recognition", which means the ISP receives your phone number when you log on. So however you access the Internet, you can be traced. The IP address collected by the site server for its records can be linked directly either to you or to your phone line.
Referring page
Many sites also collect referring page information. Your computer obviously knows where it's just come from, and the shameless electronic traitor freely passes this information on to the next site. "This is the site we arrived from," it says. Hey, who's in control here?
Browser and operating system
Your computer also tells its electronic friend at the other end what kind of browser you're using, including the version number, and what kind of operating system you have - Windows, Mac, Unix, whatever.
Screen details
Although not all computers do this, many also tell the site server what size screen you have (in pixels, not inches) and what kind of colour resolution you're using - 256, 16 bit, 24 bit. Is there no end to their treachery?
Pages viewed
And finally, without the assistance of your computer, the site server records everywhere you go on the site and how long you stay on each page.
So, these are just some of the reasons to delete your cookies.
The Case of the Disappearing Cookies
Tiny files called "cookies" are the lifeblood of online advertising. Left on visitors' computers, they help Web sites track how many visitors they have, and how often they return — numbers crucial for determining the value of a site's ad space.
So advertisers got worried in 2000 when privacy advocates began denouncing cookies. Soon after, antispyware programs started identifying cookies and offering to delete them. In 2004, 18 percent of people who knew what cookies were said they deleted them very frequently, according to a study by Revenue Science, which helps advertisers find online audiences. A survey in December, 2005 reported a drop in that figure, to 8 percent.
But more recent studies have been less cheerful for advertisers. A February report by JupiterResearch found that 41 percent of male Internet users and 25 percent of women manually deleted cookies at least once a week. Those figures would be even higher if they included people who used antispyware programs to delete cookies automatically.
By ALEX MINDLIN
So advertisers got worried in 2000 when privacy advocates began denouncing cookies. Soon after, antispyware programs started identifying cookies and offering to delete them. In 2004, 18 percent of people who knew what cookies were said they deleted them very frequently, according to a study by Revenue Science, which helps advertisers find online audiences. A survey in December, 2005 reported a drop in that figure, to 8 percent.
But more recent studies have been less cheerful for advertisers. A February report by JupiterResearch found that 41 percent of male Internet users and 25 percent of women manually deleted cookies at least once a week. Those figures would be even higher if they included people who used antispyware programs to delete cookies automatically.
By ALEX MINDLIN
Cookies: How to view, edit and delete
Cookie files are ordinary text files. Therefore, virtually any viewer or text editor that you have can be used to display and edit them. Since they are "ordinary" files, they can also be deleted.
Viewing
Because cookie files are ordinary text files, you can browse them with virtually all text editor or word processor programs. Wordpad and Notepad immediately come to mind. From DOS, you can use the Edit command. All versions of Corel Word Perfect and Microsoft Word, as well as most other word processors, will accurately display these files. If you use any product that is an editor, to view your cookie files, be sure to exit without saving.
The caveats regarding editing these files ring loud, but are largely inaccurate. I frequently view my Cookies, editing those that I choose to. To date, I have not suffered any consequences and the World Wide Web still stands. Because I allow all cookies, I often find cookies from web sites that I do not recognize. Undoubtedly I was doing a search, stopped there for a moment, found nothing memorable and am unlikely to return. Obviously, there is no benefit to me for such a cookie to tie up space on my hard drive. If you are using Netscape Navigator, this justifies removing that specific cookie from the cookies.txt file. If you are using Microsoft Explorer, this calls for a delete.
Editing
I prefer to use the Edit command from DOS because I cannot forget to save the file in proper format. Edit knows only the DOS text format. If you use any program that saves in other formats, but also in DOS text (e.g., Corel Word Perfect or Microsoft Word), be sure that when you save the file that you save it in the DOS text format.
The individual cookies within cookies.txt are clearly discernable. While the warnings at the top of the file are loud, I have been ignoring them since cookies have been on the horizon. When you see a cookie you do not like, delete it. Modifying cookies is more complicated. In many cases, it is impossible to decipher the content. When that is the case, which is most of the time, I make my decisions based on the URL at the beginning of the cookie and either leave it alone or delete the entire cookie.
When done, save the file, making sure that you save it as DOS Text, ASCII DOS Text or whatever phrase your processor uses to output a DOS Text file. If you are not sure what your processor does, play it safe. Go to DOS and simply use the Edit command. It is straight forward and quite easy to use. If you do not like going to DOS, use Notepad. It also defaults to DOS Text files. If you have concerns regarding editing the cookies.txt file, make a copy with the name cookies.dup. Then edit the cookies.txt. If you are unhappy with the results, delete the cookies.txt file and rename the cookies.dup to cookies.txt. Have fun.
Deleting
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer start fine without a cookies file. Both, on startup, immediately generate one if none is present. Thus, it is perfectly safe to delete any, or all cookies, if that is your preference. Should you take this path, you will not be able to take advantage of the features of cookies like being presented with the initial screen that you prefer or not having to enter an ID and password each time that you access a protected web site. That is your choice.
Once you know where your active cookie file(s) is/are, you can place a delete command in any of several appropriate startup files and your cookie file will survive until the next startup of your PC, Windows or browser, or their shutdown. The preparation of such routines requires a higher than typical degree of skill and the specifics will not be discussed here. If your preference is to not have cookies, but do not enjoy the interrupts that your browser provides you when you do not allow it to automatically write all cookies, there are numerous products on the market to address this problem. Some of the products address other issues including cache content. The Cookies Links button below will give you the opportunity to identify some of these products.
Hiding
The process of hiding cookies when they are not in use and then making them available to your browser upon demand is not very productive. The solution is complex and your cookies are exposed while the browser is active. Thus, the solution is not effective as anyone aware, can start your browser, switch to any viewer and then view, print or copy those cookies. If the process that reveals your cookies to your browser is sufficiently sophisticated, it is possible to setup a process where the cookies would only be revealed to you yet, others could start the browser.
I do not know of such a commercial product and the effort to create one on your own, is not justifiable. Simply stated, while I see great benefits to cookies, I do not see this degree should you be concerned about what your cookies might reveal. I would delete them and forget about it.
Viewing
Because cookie files are ordinary text files, you can browse them with virtually all text editor or word processor programs. Wordpad and Notepad immediately come to mind. From DOS, you can use the Edit command. All versions of Corel Word Perfect and Microsoft Word, as well as most other word processors, will accurately display these files. If you use any product that is an editor, to view your cookie files, be sure to exit without saving.
The caveats regarding editing these files ring loud, but are largely inaccurate. I frequently view my Cookies, editing those that I choose to. To date, I have not suffered any consequences and the World Wide Web still stands. Because I allow all cookies, I often find cookies from web sites that I do not recognize. Undoubtedly I was doing a search, stopped there for a moment, found nothing memorable and am unlikely to return. Obviously, there is no benefit to me for such a cookie to tie up space on my hard drive. If you are using Netscape Navigator, this justifies removing that specific cookie from the cookies.txt file. If you are using Microsoft Explorer, this calls for a delete.
Editing
I prefer to use the Edit command from DOS because I cannot forget to save the file in proper format. Edit knows only the DOS text format. If you use any program that saves in other formats, but also in DOS text (e.g., Corel Word Perfect or Microsoft Word), be sure that when you save the file that you save it in the DOS text format.
The individual cookies within cookies.txt are clearly discernable. While the warnings at the top of the file are loud, I have been ignoring them since cookies have been on the horizon. When you see a cookie you do not like, delete it. Modifying cookies is more complicated. In many cases, it is impossible to decipher the content. When that is the case, which is most of the time, I make my decisions based on the URL at the beginning of the cookie and either leave it alone or delete the entire cookie.
When done, save the file, making sure that you save it as DOS Text, ASCII DOS Text or whatever phrase your processor uses to output a DOS Text file. If you are not sure what your processor does, play it safe. Go to DOS and simply use the Edit command. It is straight forward and quite easy to use. If you do not like going to DOS, use Notepad. It also defaults to DOS Text files. If you have concerns regarding editing the cookies.txt file, make a copy with the name cookies.dup. Then edit the cookies.txt. If you are unhappy with the results, delete the cookies.txt file and rename the cookies.dup to cookies.txt. Have fun.
Deleting
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer start fine without a cookies file. Both, on startup, immediately generate one if none is present. Thus, it is perfectly safe to delete any, or all cookies, if that is your preference. Should you take this path, you will not be able to take advantage of the features of cookies like being presented with the initial screen that you prefer or not having to enter an ID and password each time that you access a protected web site. That is your choice.
Once you know where your active cookie file(s) is/are, you can place a delete command in any of several appropriate startup files and your cookie file will survive until the next startup of your PC, Windows or browser, or their shutdown. The preparation of such routines requires a higher than typical degree of skill and the specifics will not be discussed here. If your preference is to not have cookies, but do not enjoy the interrupts that your browser provides you when you do not allow it to automatically write all cookies, there are numerous products on the market to address this problem. Some of the products address other issues including cache content. The Cookies Links button below will give you the opportunity to identify some of these products.
Hiding
The process of hiding cookies when they are not in use and then making them available to your browser upon demand is not very productive. The solution is complex and your cookies are exposed while the browser is active. Thus, the solution is not effective as anyone aware, can start your browser, switch to any viewer and then view, print or copy those cookies. If the process that reveals your cookies to your browser is sufficiently sophisticated, it is possible to setup a process where the cookies would only be revealed to you yet, others could start the browser.
I do not know of such a commercial product and the effort to create one on your own, is not justifiable. Simply stated, while I see great benefits to cookies, I do not see this degree should you be concerned about what your cookies might reveal. I would delete them and forget about it.
Fear of Spyware Changing Online Habits
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet WriterThu Jul 7,10:08 AM ET
Internet users worried about spyware and adware are shunning specific Web sites, avoiding file-sharing networks, even switching browsers.
Many have also stopped opening e-mail attachments without first making sure they are safe, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a study issued Wednesday.
"People are scaling back on some Internet activities," said Susannah Fox, the study's main author. "People are feeling less adventurous, less free to do whatever they want to do online."
Like no other Internet threat before it, spyware is getting people's attention, she said. "It maybe will bring more awareness of all kinds of security issues."
Linda Parra, a technology usability consultant at an insurance firm in Madison, Wis., is typical of the once-burned, now-vigilant crowd.
Hit twice by spyware, after which all her Internet searches went to a rogue search engine rather than Google, she bought the safer Mac computer, installed two layers of firewalls and began switching off her broadband-connected machine when she's out.
"I've become a lot more security conscious," she said, adding that she had to learn much more about how computers and the Internet work.
Parra also banned her daughters, ages 12 and 14, from game sites.
"All it takes is one click ... and you can end up going somewhere you don't want to go and getting a little bonus pack (spyware) with your freebie," she said. "I believe that's what happened."
Spyware generally refers to unwanted programs that often sneak onto computers without their owners' full knowledge. A subset called adware covers software designed to display targeted ads to subsidize another program's development.
While some computer users knowingly install spyware and adware, they often hitch rides with games, screensavers and other freebies, or exploit security flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems and Internet Explorer browsers.
According to Pew, 48 percent of adult Internet users in the United States have stopped visiting specific Web sites that they fear might be harboring unwanted programs.
Twenty-five percent stopped using file-sharing software, which often comes bundled with adware. Rogue programs can also disguise themselves as songs or movie files awaiting download on file-sharing networks.
Eighteen percent of U.S. adult Internet users have started using Mozilla Firefox or another alternative to Internet Explorer.
In addition, 81 percent have become more cautious about e-mail attachments, a common way for spreading viruses, though rare for spyware or adware.
All told, 91 percent have made at least one behavioral change.
Users hit by spyware or adware were more likely than others to change their habits.
Avi Naider, president of adware company WhenU.com Inc., said he's not surprised.
Although in theory, adware is about exchanging value for value — free software for ads — in practice, some in the industry engage in deceptive practices and alienate consumers such that they "just stop visiting Web sites," Naider said.
Although many users have changed their online habits, they haven't necessarily fixed their machines, even as infected computers slow, often to a crawl.
Twenty percent of users who had computer problems did not attempt a fix. Among those who did, 29 percent waited a month or longer.
Two in five who tried to fix their machines did so on their own while others needed help from a friend, family member or a professional repair shop. In 20 percent of cases, the problem couldn't be fixed.
The survey also found that 43 percent of Internet users say they've been hit with spyware, adware or both. Those who report spyware were more likely to have previously engaged in "risky" behavior such as playing online games and visiting adult sites. Broadband users tend to be at greater risk.
Pew also found that three-quarters of Internet users do not always read user agreements and other disclaimers where spyware and adware are sometimes disclosed. The study was based on random telephone-based interviews with 2,001 adult Americans conducted May 4 to June 7. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Internet users worried about spyware and adware are shunning specific Web sites, avoiding file-sharing networks, even switching browsers.
Many have also stopped opening e-mail attachments without first making sure they are safe, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a study issued Wednesday.
"People are scaling back on some Internet activities," said Susannah Fox, the study's main author. "People are feeling less adventurous, less free to do whatever they want to do online."
Like no other Internet threat before it, spyware is getting people's attention, she said. "It maybe will bring more awareness of all kinds of security issues."
Linda Parra, a technology usability consultant at an insurance firm in Madison, Wis., is typical of the once-burned, now-vigilant crowd.
Hit twice by spyware, after which all her Internet searches went to a rogue search engine rather than Google, she bought the safer Mac computer, installed two layers of firewalls and began switching off her broadband-connected machine when she's out.
"I've become a lot more security conscious," she said, adding that she had to learn much more about how computers and the Internet work.
Parra also banned her daughters, ages 12 and 14, from game sites.
"All it takes is one click ... and you can end up going somewhere you don't want to go and getting a little bonus pack (spyware) with your freebie," she said. "I believe that's what happened."
Spyware generally refers to unwanted programs that often sneak onto computers without their owners' full knowledge. A subset called adware covers software designed to display targeted ads to subsidize another program's development.
While some computer users knowingly install spyware and adware, they often hitch rides with games, screensavers and other freebies, or exploit security flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems and Internet Explorer browsers.
According to Pew, 48 percent of adult Internet users in the United States have stopped visiting specific Web sites that they fear might be harboring unwanted programs.
Twenty-five percent stopped using file-sharing software, which often comes bundled with adware. Rogue programs can also disguise themselves as songs or movie files awaiting download on file-sharing networks.
Eighteen percent of U.S. adult Internet users have started using Mozilla Firefox or another alternative to Internet Explorer.
In addition, 81 percent have become more cautious about e-mail attachments, a common way for spreading viruses, though rare for spyware or adware.
All told, 91 percent have made at least one behavioral change.
Users hit by spyware or adware were more likely than others to change their habits.
Avi Naider, president of adware company WhenU.com Inc., said he's not surprised.
Although in theory, adware is about exchanging value for value — free software for ads — in practice, some in the industry engage in deceptive practices and alienate consumers such that they "just stop visiting Web sites," Naider said.
Although many users have changed their online habits, they haven't necessarily fixed their machines, even as infected computers slow, often to a crawl.
Twenty percent of users who had computer problems did not attempt a fix. Among those who did, 29 percent waited a month or longer.
Two in five who tried to fix their machines did so on their own while others needed help from a friend, family member or a professional repair shop. In 20 percent of cases, the problem couldn't be fixed.
The survey also found that 43 percent of Internet users say they've been hit with spyware, adware or both. Those who report spyware were more likely to have previously engaged in "risky" behavior such as playing online games and visiting adult sites. Broadband users tend to be at greater risk.
Pew also found that three-quarters of Internet users do not always read user agreements and other disclaimers where spyware and adware are sometimes disclosed. The study was based on random telephone-based interviews with 2,001 adult Americans conducted May 4 to June 7. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Google Cookies Expire Sooner, If You Stop Visiting
Google has thrown another bone to critics of its privacy practices, announcing it would no longer set cookies to expire in the year 2038. Now, Google will set cookies to expire two years after a user last visits the site, with the expiration date auto-renewing to two years after each visit.
The search giant says the decision to make the cookies renew is so that users would not have to re-enter their basic preferences. Google does not require visitors to log in to store search preferences, using cookies to retain the data. The move follows a recent announcement that Google would anonymize its server search logs -- including IP addresses and cookie IDs -- after 18 months.
The search giant says the decision to make the cookies renew is so that users would not have to re-enter their basic preferences. Google does not require visitors to log in to store search preferences, using cookies to retain the data. The move follows a recent announcement that Google would anonymize its server search logs -- including IP addresses and cookie IDs -- after 18 months.
Google to cut lifetime of 'cookies'
Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular search engine, said it would address privacy concerns by reducing the lifetime of "cookies" installed on the computers of people who visit its website.
The cookies, files planted on personal computers to track Internet use, will automatically expire two years after the last visit to Google's site, Peter Fleischer, the company's chief privacy lawyer, wrote Monday on the company's corporate blog. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google previously designed its cookies to expire in 2038, he said.
The European Union's data-protection agency has criticized Google for holding on to user information for too long. The New York State Consumer Protection Board on May 9 urged U.S. regulators to delay Google's $3.1-billion takeover of online advertising company DoubleClick Inc. until the company better protected consumers' privacy.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies," Fleischer wrote.
Shares of Google rose 83 cents to $552.99.
The cookies, files planted on personal computers to track Internet use, will automatically expire two years after the last visit to Google's site, Peter Fleischer, the company's chief privacy lawyer, wrote Monday on the company's corporate blog. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google previously designed its cookies to expire in 2038, he said.
The European Union's data-protection agency has criticized Google for holding on to user information for too long. The New York State Consumer Protection Board on May 9 urged U.S. regulators to delay Google's $3.1-billion takeover of online advertising company DoubleClick Inc. until the company better protected consumers' privacy.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies," Fleischer wrote.
Shares of Google rose 83 cents to $552.99.
Google trims lifespan of user-tracking 'cookies'
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Google announced Monday that it is shortening the lives of software "cookies" used to track users' online preferences.
In coming months Google will begin issuing cookies that automatically expire two years after a person visits the website provided they don't return, according to the US firm's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer.
"We've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time," Fleischer wrote in a Google blog post Monday.
Online privacy advocates expect Google's new "cookie policy" to change little since the two-year lifespan of tracking software renews with each visit so people must stop using Google for the entire period for the cookies to self-destruct.
Cookies previously installed on computers by Google are made to expire in 2038.
"Google's change doesn't tame the cookie monster, of course," wrote Internet privacy expert Jim Harper on the Technology Liberation Front website.
"It remains with you to tame the cookie monster, if that's what you care to do. Your web browser provides you the ability to control them, which gives you the responsibility to do so. I control mine."
Google and other Internet firms put bits of code called "cookies" on users' computers to tailor services, for example determine whether a search for "WWF" should get World Wildlife Fund or Worldwide Wrestling Federation as a result.
In coming months Google will begin issuing cookies that automatically expire two years after a person visits the website provided they don't return, according to the US firm's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer.
"We've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time," Fleischer wrote in a Google blog post Monday.
Online privacy advocates expect Google's new "cookie policy" to change little since the two-year lifespan of tracking software renews with each visit so people must stop using Google for the entire period for the cookies to self-destruct.
Cookies previously installed on computers by Google are made to expire in 2038.
"Google's change doesn't tame the cookie monster, of course," wrote Internet privacy expert Jim Harper on the Technology Liberation Front website.
"It remains with you to tame the cookie monster, if that's what you care to do. Your web browser provides you the ability to control them, which gives you the responsibility to do so. I control mine."
Google and other Internet firms put bits of code called "cookies" on users' computers to tailor services, for example determine whether a search for "WWF" should get World Wildlife Fund or Worldwide Wrestling Federation as a result.
Google Puts 2-Year Expiration Date on Cookies
Google has significantly decreased the lifespan of the cookies it distributes to users' computers. Instead of staying alive for 30 years, the data packets will now automatically delete after just two years. However, that decrease may not be as dramatic as it appears -- the cookies will still automatically renew their two-year countdowns each time the computer visits a Google site.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) decreased the length of time and amount of information the company holds on users' preferences and searches Monday with the announcement that it will shorten the lifespan of the small parcels of information it stores on users' computers, known as "cookies." The lifespan of Google's cookies will be shortened from more than 30 years to a comparatively brief two years, the company said.
"We are committed to an ongoing process to improve our privacy practices, and have recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy," said Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel at Google. "How long should a Web site 'remember' cookie information in its logs after a user's visit? And when should a cookie expire on your computer? Cookie privacy is both a server and a client issue.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies. ... In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after two years," he continued.
The decision comes four months after Google announced that it would "anonymize" data logs containing details on users' searches -- such as search queries, IP addresses and cookie ID numbers -- after 18 to 24 months. The policy would make the data "much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users," the company stated.
Pre-Packaged Cookies
Cookies are bits of information sent from a Web site's server, in this case Google's search servers, to a visitor's Web browser, Jen Albornoz Mulligan, a Forrester Research analyst, explained to TechNewsWorld. They can track information about what Web sites the user visits and what searches are conducted.
There are two types of cookies. First-party cookies are those supplied, read and used by the same server. Third-party cookies are cookies set to track users across multiple Web sites and are commonly used by advertisers to improve targeted advertising .
"[Cookies] can keep track of this information over time, even if the computer switches IP addresses, such as moving from home to work," Mulligan continued.
Practically every Web site uses cookies to differentiate between its visitors or users and log data concerning their activities while on the site. Nearly every Internet surfer in the world, knowingly or not, is affected from the use of cookies multiple times a day during common activities such as logging in, using a shopping cart or having a personalized Web page on a site based on the user's preferences.
As is often the case, however, the very technology that makes using the Internet a bit easier at the same time poses a significant risk to users' privacy.
Cookies issued by Google enable users to maintain search histories and to personalize their iGoogle homepages, among other things. While beneficial for users, Google also uses the data to provide better search results as well as targeted advertising. The information is not just a boon for Google and its users; the government can also subpoena the data for use in its investigations, criminal and otherwise.
Google set its cookies to expire in 2038, Mulligan said, so that the company will know users' preferences over a long time. The time span of 30 years was arbitrarily chosen. "They probably wanted to be sure that they'd have the settings saved for as long as they'd imagine someone could possible keep their computer."
From 2038 to 2009
Although Google touts the reduction of its cookie lifespan as a boon for privacy, the policy revamp is in fact merely a "mild concession," according to Mulligan. The cookies may be set to auto-expire after two years, but they have also been programmed to auto-renew for active users.
In other words, say a student goes to Google for the first time to research an eighth grade science project. After it is completed, she does not return to the site again until the 11th grade. In that scenario, any cookies deposited on the student's computer would have expired. However, if the student used the site on a daily basis, each visit would reset the cookie's expiration date to two years from the most recent visit. That, Google said, will ensure that users' preferences are not lost.
"It is a step in the right direction, but two years is still a relatively long-lasting cookie," Mulligan pointed out. "The new policy does a better job of conforming to the privacy principles of collection limitation and use limitation -- meaning data should only be collected if it is really useful -- and should only be used for the purposes previously stated."
On the up side, Mulligan noted, Google's policy change will "force consideration of the issue by other search engines, just as now the EU (European Union) is looking at Lycos and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) for how long they keep logs as well."
Privacy Promotion
Google, she added, is in a strong position to do some very good public privacy awareness campaigns that would go a long way in protecting users' privacy. "They have a lot of users and could actively teach those users about privacy and cookies," she continued. "They should train users about setting proper privacy controls, in their browser and on their machine."
Users, for instance, who really want to keep cookies off of their computers can set their Web browsers' privacy options to reject those cookies automatically.
The company needs to take their privacy considerations one step further, Mulligan stated, and review new products with a more discerning eye towards privacy to prevent issues such as inappropriate pictures on Google Earth.
At times it seems the search provider is caught between a rock and a hard place, with privacy advocates on one side and government on the other. Over the past 18 months, Google fought what it called an overreaching subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice, received a poor ranking from advocacy group Privacy International, and has come under fire from the European Union for its privacy policy.
"Google has been skewered by the media unfairly compared to its peers," Mulligan concluded. "It generally has not done anything worse [than other Internet search providers] and is garnering attention because it is the most popular. But with that popularity comes the responsibility to set a good example and behave ethically. Google is clearly working through the pain of having to trade off business effectiveness and user privacy, which is difficult for any business."
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) decreased the length of time and amount of information the company holds on users' preferences and searches Monday with the announcement that it will shorten the lifespan of the small parcels of information it stores on users' computers, known as "cookies." The lifespan of Google's cookies will be shortened from more than 30 years to a comparatively brief two years, the company said.
"We are committed to an ongoing process to improve our privacy practices, and have recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy," said Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel at Google. "How long should a Web site 'remember' cookie information in its logs after a user's visit? And when should a cookie expire on your computer? Cookie privacy is both a server and a client issue.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies. ... In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after two years," he continued.
The decision comes four months after Google announced that it would "anonymize" data logs containing details on users' searches -- such as search queries, IP addresses and cookie ID numbers -- after 18 to 24 months. The policy would make the data "much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users," the company stated.
Pre-Packaged Cookies
Cookies are bits of information sent from a Web site's server, in this case Google's search servers, to a visitor's Web browser, Jen Albornoz Mulligan, a Forrester Research analyst, explained to TechNewsWorld. They can track information about what Web sites the user visits and what searches are conducted.
There are two types of cookies. First-party cookies are those supplied, read and used by the same server. Third-party cookies are cookies set to track users across multiple Web sites and are commonly used by advertisers to improve targeted advertising .
"[Cookies] can keep track of this information over time, even if the computer switches IP addresses, such as moving from home to work," Mulligan continued.
Practically every Web site uses cookies to differentiate between its visitors or users and log data concerning their activities while on the site. Nearly every Internet surfer in the world, knowingly or not, is affected from the use of cookies multiple times a day during common activities such as logging in, using a shopping cart or having a personalized Web page on a site based on the user's preferences.
As is often the case, however, the very technology that makes using the Internet a bit easier at the same time poses a significant risk to users' privacy.
Cookies issued by Google enable users to maintain search histories and to personalize their iGoogle homepages, among other things. While beneficial for users, Google also uses the data to provide better search results as well as targeted advertising. The information is not just a boon for Google and its users; the government can also subpoena the data for use in its investigations, criminal and otherwise.
Google set its cookies to expire in 2038, Mulligan said, so that the company will know users' preferences over a long time. The time span of 30 years was arbitrarily chosen. "They probably wanted to be sure that they'd have the settings saved for as long as they'd imagine someone could possible keep their computer."
From 2038 to 2009
Although Google touts the reduction of its cookie lifespan as a boon for privacy, the policy revamp is in fact merely a "mild concession," according to Mulligan. The cookies may be set to auto-expire after two years, but they have also been programmed to auto-renew for active users.
In other words, say a student goes to Google for the first time to research an eighth grade science project. After it is completed, she does not return to the site again until the 11th grade. In that scenario, any cookies deposited on the student's computer would have expired. However, if the student used the site on a daily basis, each visit would reset the cookie's expiration date to two years from the most recent visit. That, Google said, will ensure that users' preferences are not lost.
"It is a step in the right direction, but two years is still a relatively long-lasting cookie," Mulligan pointed out. "The new policy does a better job of conforming to the privacy principles of collection limitation and use limitation -- meaning data should only be collected if it is really useful -- and should only be used for the purposes previously stated."
On the up side, Mulligan noted, Google's policy change will "force consideration of the issue by other search engines, just as now the EU (European Union) is looking at Lycos and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) for how long they keep logs as well."
Privacy Promotion
Google, she added, is in a strong position to do some very good public privacy awareness campaigns that would go a long way in protecting users' privacy. "They have a lot of users and could actively teach those users about privacy and cookies," she continued. "They should train users about setting proper privacy controls, in their browser and on their machine."
Users, for instance, who really want to keep cookies off of their computers can set their Web browsers' privacy options to reject those cookies automatically.
The company needs to take their privacy considerations one step further, Mulligan stated, and review new products with a more discerning eye towards privacy to prevent issues such as inappropriate pictures on Google Earth.
At times it seems the search provider is caught between a rock and a hard place, with privacy advocates on one side and government on the other. Over the past 18 months, Google fought what it called an overreaching subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice, received a poor ranking from advocacy group Privacy International, and has come under fire from the European Union for its privacy policy.
"Google has been skewered by the media unfairly compared to its peers," Mulligan concluded. "It generally has not done anything worse [than other Internet search providers] and is garnering attention because it is the most popular. But with that popularity comes the responsibility to set a good example and behave ethically. Google is clearly working through the pain of having to trade off business effectiveness and user privacy, which is difficult for any business."
Google Puts New Time Limit on Cookies
In its ongoing efforts to placate the concerns of privacy groups in the United States and in Europe, Google announced a new expiration date for the cookies that it uses to store information about users of its services. As has become common practice for Google, the change was announced on the company's official blog.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates," wrote Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, "we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies -- as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to reenter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we're announcing a new cookie policy."
From now on, Fleischer said, any cookie placed on a user's computer will automatically expire after two years. However, if a user revisits a Google service, then the Google cookies will automatically renew and start a new two-year lifespan.
Significantly Shorter Lifespan
The move by Google reduces the life of its cookies substantially; currently, Google cookies are set to expire in 2038. Fleischer said that the purpose of setting such a distant expiration date was to ensure that the cookies would adequately maintain user information, such as Google site preferences.
Privacy expert Lauren Weinstein, moderator of the long-running Privacy Forum, expressed support for the change, but offered some reservations. "A cookie that expires in a reasonable length of time is almost always better in theory (from a privacy standpoint) than one that lasts for much longer periods of time, all else being equal," Weinstein said.
"Does two years fall into the 'reasonable' category?" he asked rhetorically. "That depends on the details of how the cookies are being used, so I can't definitively answer the question in this case."
DoubleClick Implications
The more significant issue, Weinstein said, is how Google's cookies will interact with those of DoubleClick, the online ad server company that Google recently purchased for $3.1 billion.
"The challenge for Google," he suggested, "is to maintain high privacy standards even while using cookies to link services. This will need to be a crucial element in their integration of DoubleClick, since DoubleClick is traditionally associated with third-party sites which would typically have no obvious connection with Google."
Like other privacy advocates, Weinstein is concerned that the purchase of DoubleClick by Google gives Google access to vast quantities of data that can be combined with Google-collected data in as-yet-unseen ways, particularly given the fact that DoubleClick's services are so widely deployed.
"It doesn't necessarily have to be a big privacy problem," Weinstein said, "but the potential risks are real. The devil is in the details."
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates," wrote Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, "we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies -- as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to reenter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we're announcing a new cookie policy."
From now on, Fleischer said, any cookie placed on a user's computer will automatically expire after two years. However, if a user revisits a Google service, then the Google cookies will automatically renew and start a new two-year lifespan.
Significantly Shorter Lifespan
The move by Google reduces the life of its cookies substantially; currently, Google cookies are set to expire in 2038. Fleischer said that the purpose of setting such a distant expiration date was to ensure that the cookies would adequately maintain user information, such as Google site preferences.
Privacy expert Lauren Weinstein, moderator of the long-running Privacy Forum, expressed support for the change, but offered some reservations. "A cookie that expires in a reasonable length of time is almost always better in theory (from a privacy standpoint) than one that lasts for much longer periods of time, all else being equal," Weinstein said.
"Does two years fall into the 'reasonable' category?" he asked rhetorically. "That depends on the details of how the cookies are being used, so I can't definitively answer the question in this case."
DoubleClick Implications
The more significant issue, Weinstein said, is how Google's cookies will interact with those of DoubleClick, the online ad server company that Google recently purchased for $3.1 billion.
"The challenge for Google," he suggested, "is to maintain high privacy standards even while using cookies to link services. This will need to be a crucial element in their integration of DoubleClick, since DoubleClick is traditionally associated with third-party sites which would typically have no obvious connection with Google."
Like other privacy advocates, Weinstein is concerned that the purchase of DoubleClick by Google gives Google access to vast quantities of data that can be combined with Google-collected data in as-yet-unseen ways, particularly given the fact that DoubleClick's services are so widely deployed.
"It doesn't necessarily have to be a big privacy problem," Weinstein said, "but the potential risks are real. The devil is in the details."
Google in cookie concession to dead peoplePrivacy in the hereafter
Hoping to appease privacy advocates who've come down hard on its data retention policies, Google has made a practically meaningless change to its cookie policy.
The world's most popular search engine will soon issue browser cookies that automatically expire if you don't come back to the site for two years.
El Reg estimates that most people who don't return to Google after two years are either dead or confined to maximum security prison - most likely dead.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies - as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we're announcing a new cookie policy," Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer writes on the company's official blog.
Sometime "in the coming months", according to Fleischer, Google will introduce cookies that "auto-expire" for users who don't return for two years and "auto-renew" for active users. The "auto-renew" bit means that anytime you visit the site, the two year clock starts all over again. Or as Fleischer puts it, "regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost".
Existing Google cookies were set expire sometime in 2038. "We were mindful of the fact that users can always go to their browsers to change their cookie management settings, e.g. to delete all cookies, delete specific cookies, or accept certain types of cookies (like first-party cookies) but reject others (like third-party cookies)," says Fleischer.
The way we see it, even after the policy change, the onus is still on users to manage their own cookies. Unless they kick the bucket.
The world's most popular search engine will soon issue browser cookies that automatically expire if you don't come back to the site for two years.
El Reg estimates that most people who don't return to Google after two years are either dead or confined to maximum security prison - most likely dead.
"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies - as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we're announcing a new cookie policy," Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer writes on the company's official blog.
Sometime "in the coming months", according to Fleischer, Google will introduce cookies that "auto-expire" for users who don't return for two years and "auto-renew" for active users. The "auto-renew" bit means that anytime you visit the site, the two year clock starts all over again. Or as Fleischer puts it, "regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost".
Existing Google cookies were set expire sometime in 2038. "We were mindful of the fact that users can always go to their browsers to change their cookie management settings, e.g. to delete all cookies, delete specific cookies, or accept certain types of cookies (like first-party cookies) but reject others (like third-party cookies)," says Fleischer.
The way we see it, even after the policy change, the onus is still on users to manage their own cookies. Unless they kick the bucket.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Rachael Ray to feature local cookies
COOPERSTOWN — Shortbread baseball cookies from the Cooperstown Cookie Company will be featured as the "snack of the day" on "The Rachael Ray Show" on Wednesday, July 4.
Members of the show's audience will enjoy tins of the Classic Baseball Shortbread cookies in all four flavors — Classic Shortbread, Boys of Summer Lemon, All-Star Almond and Mudville Mudball Chocolate Chip.
"Classic Baseball Shortbread cookies are the ideal all-American treat," said Pati Drumm Grady, the company's founder and president. "What better day to be featured on 'Rachael Ray' than the Fourth of July."
Locally, "The Rachael Ray Show" can be seen at 10 a.m. on WKTV.
The cookie company will also be featured on an episode of the Food Network's "Unwrapped" on Friday, July 6.
Members of the show's audience will enjoy tins of the Classic Baseball Shortbread cookies in all four flavors — Classic Shortbread, Boys of Summer Lemon, All-Star Almond and Mudville Mudball Chocolate Chip.
"Classic Baseball Shortbread cookies are the ideal all-American treat," said Pati Drumm Grady, the company's founder and president. "What better day to be featured on 'Rachael Ray' than the Fourth of July."
Locally, "The Rachael Ray Show" can be seen at 10 a.m. on WKTV.
The cookie company will also be featured on an episode of the Food Network's "Unwrapped" on Friday, July 6.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Is the Browser Battle Heating Up on a New Front?
For a long time, the battle over which is the best operating system has been a three-way one. The vast majority of computer user still depend on some version of Windows, but the market share for Linux in all its varieties has grown over the years. And there is an even larger (although still small) following for the Macintosh.
Here's the way it's broken down as of May 2007, according to the Market Shares web site run by Net Applications: Windows XP currently enjoys a little over 82 percent of the market, with other Windows operating systems making up another 11 percent or so.
Macs come in second with almost 9 and half percent (includes both MacOS and MacIntel), and Linux - despite open source advocates' best efforts - is reported with less than 1 percent of the market. The numbers don't add up to 100 percent because a few other specialty operating systems, such as Hiptop (for mobile phones) and PSP (for gaming consoles) are also included in the statistics, but the top three dominate desktop computing.
The web browser is arguably the most used piece of software on most computers and similarly, the browser wars have been primarily a battle between three contenders: Internet Explorer (with almost 79 percent), Firefox (with just over fourteen and a half percent) and Safari (with almost 5 percent). There are many other browsers available, including the one-time favorite Netscape, Opera, Konqueror and versions of Mozilla, but the rest all show under 1 percent of market share.
Safari has, up until now, suffered a disadvantage in this contest. Since it ran only on Macs, and Macs are on less than 10 percent of computers, most users weren't able to run or even try the browser.
Thus, most folks, when you say "alternative web browser," think only of Firefox. But now, if you happen to like the Safari web browser that comes with Mac OS X, but prefer to use Windows (or have to at work), now you can take a Safari without switching your OS. Apple has just released a version of Safari for Windows.
Some pundits warn that it's just a ploy to lure Windows users over to the Mac. Others applaud the ability to use Mac programs they like without having to switch platforms. Some speculate the Safari for Windows release will hurt Firefox more than IE. Whatever your opinion may be, it was downloaded more than a million times in its first two days of availability. Somebody must be interested.
This release is a beta, and it was announced by Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers' Conference 2007 last week. The Windows version has the safe features as the one that runs on OS X. Apples claims that Safari runs twice as fast as IE and significantly faster than Firefox. Since the need for speed seems to be a common trait of computer users, this makes Safari look like an attractive alternative.
It also boasts some interesting features such as SnapBack, a button that lets you instantly go back to the top level of a web site after browsing deeply into it or create an anchor point to snap back to after browsing through many links and sites. And it has a security feature called "private browsing" that lets you turn off storage of search results, cookies, site history, download history and other normally cached information, instead of having to erase those caches after the fact.
I wanted to find out for myself. I always install multiple browsers, for several reasons. Some web sites won't render properly (or at all) in one browser but look fine in another. And I create web pages, so I like to take a look at my own pages in different browsers so I'll know how others are experiencing them. I currently have IE 7, Firefox and Opera installed on my primary desktop computer and I was eager to add Safari to the collection.
Download and installation of the beta took only a few minutes, but I made sure to create a restore point first, just in case. It was pretty non-intrusive; it did install an icon on the desktop, but interestingly it didn't open the browser after installation. I clicked the icon - and immediately got a message that the program had stopped working. Subsequent attempts rendered the same result. Although it was advertised as being for XP or Vista, my installation of Vista apparently didn't like it.
I tried changing the compatibility settings on the Safari.exe program to run in XP compatibility mode. That's worked for a number of programs that didn't work on Vista right off the bat, but it had no effect here. Next I tried running as an administrator. That didn't work, either. Okay, maybe - even though it didn't say so in the installation instructions - it required a reboot. I closed everything and restarted the computer. Still no Safari for me.
Not one to give up that easily, I next tried to install Safari on a couple of XP machines - first one that belonged to my Windows domain and then, when I was unsuccessful again, on one that wasn't a domain member. This time I got a little further - Safari detected my proxy server and asked for my credentials. I had high hopes. However, after I entered them, I got the XP dialog box telling me that Safari had encountered a problem and needs to close.
If I canceled the proxy dialog box, I couldn't access any web sites, but I could examine the Safari menus and Help files. Unfortunately, the Help files provided no help for my problem. The good news was that the installation attempt didn't cause any problems for the OS or other programs, but darn it, I had used Safari on OS X and wanted to get a chance to actually use it to view web pages on XP or Vista.
Tom started mulling over the problem with me, and we came up with one last idea, based on the request for proxy credentials on the XP computer. Maybe the proxy authentication wasn't working correctly. He headed upstairs to the server room and turned off proxy authentication on the ISA Server that's installed on our network edge. Sure enough, Safari then worked fine.
It's not a very practical solution. For security purposes, we're not going to leave authentication turned off just so we can use the Safari browser. But at least we did track down what was causing the problem, and I got a chance to take a brief look at the browser.
The interface is the familiar OS X look (which I rather like). Its window frames are not transparent in Vista, though. And yes, it is fast. In side-by- side tests, it opened most pages more quickly than IE and Firefox, but not by a lot. In fact, the other two browsers sped up a lot when proxy authentication was off, too.
I had one immediate complaint: when you click in the address bar, it doesn't highlight the whole address as IE and Firefox both do, so you can type in a new one without dragging to highlight and delete the old one. Minor, but annoying. Also, as with all OS X programs, you can't resize the window by just grabbing the edge anywhere; you have to grab it at the bottom left corner. That can take some getting used to.
As promised, it imported my IE bookmarks without asking (not sure if that's good or bad). The way it handles bookmarks is interesting; there is a bookmarks tab that you can choose to show or hide. SnapBack also works as described, and I think I could get to like that feature.
Note that the initial release had some security problems, but Apple released an update on Thursday (June 14) to fix the vulnerabilities. Be sure you have version 3.0.1. If you have the Apple Update software installed, it'll be pushed to you through that. And you may want to read this article from Larry Seltzer that discusses the "halo effect" before installing Safari.
If you still want to give it a try, you can download the Safari beta here.
Let me know how you like it and whether you encounter any problems running it on Windows. Also tell us: what's your favorite web browser, and why? Do you use more than one browser? What features would you like to see on the ideal web browser?
Deb Shinder
Here's the way it's broken down as of May 2007, according to the Market Shares web site run by Net Applications: Windows XP currently enjoys a little over 82 percent of the market, with other Windows operating systems making up another 11 percent or so.
Macs come in second with almost 9 and half percent (includes both MacOS and MacIntel), and Linux - despite open source advocates' best efforts - is reported with less than 1 percent of the market. The numbers don't add up to 100 percent because a few other specialty operating systems, such as Hiptop (for mobile phones) and PSP (for gaming consoles) are also included in the statistics, but the top three dominate desktop computing.
The web browser is arguably the most used piece of software on most computers and similarly, the browser wars have been primarily a battle between three contenders: Internet Explorer (with almost 79 percent), Firefox (with just over fourteen and a half percent) and Safari (with almost 5 percent). There are many other browsers available, including the one-time favorite Netscape, Opera, Konqueror and versions of Mozilla, but the rest all show under 1 percent of market share.
Safari has, up until now, suffered a disadvantage in this contest. Since it ran only on Macs, and Macs are on less than 10 percent of computers, most users weren't able to run or even try the browser.
Thus, most folks, when you say "alternative web browser," think only of Firefox. But now, if you happen to like the Safari web browser that comes with Mac OS X, but prefer to use Windows (or have to at work), now you can take a Safari without switching your OS. Apple has just released a version of Safari for Windows.
Some pundits warn that it's just a ploy to lure Windows users over to the Mac. Others applaud the ability to use Mac programs they like without having to switch platforms. Some speculate the Safari for Windows release will hurt Firefox more than IE. Whatever your opinion may be, it was downloaded more than a million times in its first two days of availability. Somebody must be interested.
This release is a beta, and it was announced by Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers' Conference 2007 last week. The Windows version has the safe features as the one that runs on OS X. Apples claims that Safari runs twice as fast as IE and significantly faster than Firefox. Since the need for speed seems to be a common trait of computer users, this makes Safari look like an attractive alternative.
It also boasts some interesting features such as SnapBack, a button that lets you instantly go back to the top level of a web site after browsing deeply into it or create an anchor point to snap back to after browsing through many links and sites. And it has a security feature called "private browsing" that lets you turn off storage of search results, cookies, site history, download history and other normally cached information, instead of having to erase those caches after the fact.
I wanted to find out for myself. I always install multiple browsers, for several reasons. Some web sites won't render properly (or at all) in one browser but look fine in another. And I create web pages, so I like to take a look at my own pages in different browsers so I'll know how others are experiencing them. I currently have IE 7, Firefox and Opera installed on my primary desktop computer and I was eager to add Safari to the collection.
Download and installation of the beta took only a few minutes, but I made sure to create a restore point first, just in case. It was pretty non-intrusive; it did install an icon on the desktop, but interestingly it didn't open the browser after installation. I clicked the icon - and immediately got a message that the program had stopped working. Subsequent attempts rendered the same result. Although it was advertised as being for XP or Vista, my installation of Vista apparently didn't like it.
I tried changing the compatibility settings on the Safari.exe program to run in XP compatibility mode. That's worked for a number of programs that didn't work on Vista right off the bat, but it had no effect here. Next I tried running as an administrator. That didn't work, either. Okay, maybe - even though it didn't say so in the installation instructions - it required a reboot. I closed everything and restarted the computer. Still no Safari for me.
Not one to give up that easily, I next tried to install Safari on a couple of XP machines - first one that belonged to my Windows domain and then, when I was unsuccessful again, on one that wasn't a domain member. This time I got a little further - Safari detected my proxy server and asked for my credentials. I had high hopes. However, after I entered them, I got the XP dialog box telling me that Safari had encountered a problem and needs to close.
If I canceled the proxy dialog box, I couldn't access any web sites, but I could examine the Safari menus and Help files. Unfortunately, the Help files provided no help for my problem. The good news was that the installation attempt didn't cause any problems for the OS or other programs, but darn it, I had used Safari on OS X and wanted to get a chance to actually use it to view web pages on XP or Vista.
Tom started mulling over the problem with me, and we came up with one last idea, based on the request for proxy credentials on the XP computer. Maybe the proxy authentication wasn't working correctly. He headed upstairs to the server room and turned off proxy authentication on the ISA Server that's installed on our network edge. Sure enough, Safari then worked fine.
It's not a very practical solution. For security purposes, we're not going to leave authentication turned off just so we can use the Safari browser. But at least we did track down what was causing the problem, and I got a chance to take a brief look at the browser.
The interface is the familiar OS X look (which I rather like). Its window frames are not transparent in Vista, though. And yes, it is fast. In side-by- side tests, it opened most pages more quickly than IE and Firefox, but not by a lot. In fact, the other two browsers sped up a lot when proxy authentication was off, too.
I had one immediate complaint: when you click in the address bar, it doesn't highlight the whole address as IE and Firefox both do, so you can type in a new one without dragging to highlight and delete the old one. Minor, but annoying. Also, as with all OS X programs, you can't resize the window by just grabbing the edge anywhere; you have to grab it at the bottom left corner. That can take some getting used to.
As promised, it imported my IE bookmarks without asking (not sure if that's good or bad). The way it handles bookmarks is interesting; there is a bookmarks tab that you can choose to show or hide. SnapBack also works as described, and I think I could get to like that feature.
Note that the initial release had some security problems, but Apple released an update on Thursday (June 14) to fix the vulnerabilities. Be sure you have version 3.0.1. If you have the Apple Update software installed, it'll be pushed to you through that. And you may want to read this article from Larry Seltzer that discusses the "halo effect" before installing Safari.
If you still want to give it a try, you can download the Safari beta here.
Let me know how you like it and whether you encounter any problems running it on Windows. Also tell us: what's your favorite web browser, and why? Do you use more than one browser? What features would you like to see on the ideal web browser?
Deb Shinder
Monday, June 18, 2007
Computer Cookies and How They Crumble
By ALEX MINDLIN
Published: June 18, 2007
Tiny files called “cookies” are the lifeblood of online advertising. When a computer visits a site or sees an ad for the first time, the site’s server slips a cookie onto the visitor’s hard drive, identifying the computer in future dealings with that site or ad network. Cookies let online hosts determine the number of unique visitors they reach, a key metric for advertisers.
But this system of measurement has a well-known flaw: users are prone to delete their cookies, either manually or by using antispyware programs. Users who delete a cookie are eventually given a new one by that cookie’s issuer, meaning that they are often counted as unique visitors, inflating the numbers at host sites.
In a recently released study, the research firm comScore examined the fate of two commonly issued cookies across a panel of roughly 400,000 computers last December. It found that only 7.1 percent of the computers deleted their cookies four or more times over the month. But these “serial deleters” accounted for a grossly disproportionate share of the servers’ apparent traffic, receiving 35.3 percent of the total number of cookies observed.
Published: June 18, 2007
Tiny files called “cookies” are the lifeblood of online advertising. When a computer visits a site or sees an ad for the first time, the site’s server slips a cookie onto the visitor’s hard drive, identifying the computer in future dealings with that site or ad network. Cookies let online hosts determine the number of unique visitors they reach, a key metric for advertisers.
But this system of measurement has a well-known flaw: users are prone to delete their cookies, either manually or by using antispyware programs. Users who delete a cookie are eventually given a new one by that cookie’s issuer, meaning that they are often counted as unique visitors, inflating the numbers at host sites.
In a recently released study, the research firm comScore examined the fate of two commonly issued cookies across a panel of roughly 400,000 computers last December. It found that only 7.1 percent of the computers deleted their cookies four or more times over the month. But these “serial deleters” accounted for a grossly disproportionate share of the servers’ apparent traffic, receiving 35.3 percent of the total number of cookies observed.
Deleting computer files doesn't really erase them
Documents, e-mails, photos linger in system
Looking to erase files, images and other information from a computer?
It takes more than tapping the delete key and emptying the recycle bin. In fact, the only way to completely eliminate data with any certainty is to use specialized software created for just that purpose, experts say.
"You have to be very savvy in order to wipe the information off a hard drive by yourself," said Greg Beckemeier, a project manager at St. Louis-based United Forensics, which provides computer and technology forensics services. "Even when you've cleared the cache, erased cookies and deleted files, they are still there and can be recovered."
Computers essentially store copies of almost everything a user views. That includes e-mails, downloaded documents and photos on Web sites, even if the user didn't click on the images.
"Every time you go to a Web site, all the pictures and graphics, even if you didn't click on them, are downloaded to temporary Internet files on the computer," said Catherine O'Keefe, forensics service manager at Centennial- based Computer Forensic Labs.
"Each one of these has a date and time stamp, a creation date, the date they were modified and the date they were last accessed."
So photos and videos are still on a hard drive even if someone didn't specifically download and save them, let alone view them.
Computers store files and data in various places on a hard drive, making it hard to completely erase everything. They also record the date and time that files were accessed and certain programs were used, which likely is how investigators in former District Judge Larry Manzanares case discovered that someone recently deleted pornography and emptied the recycle bin.
Deleting a file is akin to simply removing a card from the card catalogue in a library, said Brady Essman, founder of Arapahoe County-based DigitalMedix.
"If you remove the card, the book is still on the shelf," Essman said. "Somebody who knows how to look for it can still find it."
In more technical terms, deleting a file essentially tells the computer it can write over that space if it needs to, experts said. But the file is still there until that happens, which can take years.
Some software products, though, can completely eliminate files, either for a fee or for free over the Internet.
Where do deleted files go?
When you delete a file, depending on your operating system and your settings, it may be transferred to your trash or recycle bin. This "holding area" protects you from yourself - if you accidentally delete a file, you can easily restore it.
However, you may have experienced the panic that results from emptying the trash bin prematurely or having a file seem to disappear on its own.
The good news is that even though it may be difficult to locate, the file is probably still somewhere on your machine.
The bad news is that even though you think you've deleted a file, an attacker or other unauthorized person may be able to retrieve it.Source: U.S. Department Of Homeland Security
Looking to erase files, images and other information from a computer?
It takes more than tapping the delete key and emptying the recycle bin. In fact, the only way to completely eliminate data with any certainty is to use specialized software created for just that purpose, experts say.
"You have to be very savvy in order to wipe the information off a hard drive by yourself," said Greg Beckemeier, a project manager at St. Louis-based United Forensics, which provides computer and technology forensics services. "Even when you've cleared the cache, erased cookies and deleted files, they are still there and can be recovered."
Computers essentially store copies of almost everything a user views. That includes e-mails, downloaded documents and photos on Web sites, even if the user didn't click on the images.
"Every time you go to a Web site, all the pictures and graphics, even if you didn't click on them, are downloaded to temporary Internet files on the computer," said Catherine O'Keefe, forensics service manager at Centennial- based Computer Forensic Labs.
"Each one of these has a date and time stamp, a creation date, the date they were modified and the date they were last accessed."
So photos and videos are still on a hard drive even if someone didn't specifically download and save them, let alone view them.
Computers store files and data in various places on a hard drive, making it hard to completely erase everything. They also record the date and time that files were accessed and certain programs were used, which likely is how investigators in former District Judge Larry Manzanares case discovered that someone recently deleted pornography and emptied the recycle bin.
Deleting a file is akin to simply removing a card from the card catalogue in a library, said Brady Essman, founder of Arapahoe County-based DigitalMedix.
"If you remove the card, the book is still on the shelf," Essman said. "Somebody who knows how to look for it can still find it."
In more technical terms, deleting a file essentially tells the computer it can write over that space if it needs to, experts said. But the file is still there until that happens, which can take years.
Some software products, though, can completely eliminate files, either for a fee or for free over the Internet.
Where do deleted files go?
When you delete a file, depending on your operating system and your settings, it may be transferred to your trash or recycle bin. This "holding area" protects you from yourself - if you accidentally delete a file, you can easily restore it.
However, you may have experienced the panic that results from emptying the trash bin prematurely or having a file seem to disappear on its own.
The good news is that even though it may be difficult to locate, the file is probably still somewhere on your machine.
The bad news is that even though you think you've deleted a file, an attacker or other unauthorized person may be able to retrieve it.Source: U.S. Department Of Homeland Security
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)