Does this giveaway take the biscuit (cookie)?

[Hippy]

Some "Spyware" aware visitors may have noticed that The Answerbank tries to silently install a tracking cookie from a crowd of American smoke and mirrors merchants called Avenue A Inc. The little text file sits on your computer and does nothing. These are called "cookies" to make you think that they are somehow nice and homely. However, when you visit a site like The Answerbank that operates this Scumware, it peeks inside your memory banks, sees the little cookie file, then sends this information back to the site you visited.

 

Eventually all these bits of information from the many sites on the Net using this Scumware phone home and hey presto! Avenue A Inc. and its partner in scum Iballs.com has, in their words, "...deployed Avenue A's proprietary technology for the placement, tracking and optimization of Internet marketing campaigns." In other words, without your knowledge or permission this alliance of scum has followed your Internet browsing habits to provide them with "intelligence" that they then sell under the heading of "Marketing Product Targeting" or some such meaningless twaddle for a mountain of cash. See here for more http://tinyurl.com/67zr4

 

How do you feel about contributing to this company's wealth without your knowledge, permission, and for free?

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[Kos]

Bet Answerbank won't comment on this!!

[jenstar]

Just block Avenue A in your HOSTS file. Or get a decent browser that allows you to selectively block cookies. Or, best of all, do both.

[Hippy]

Right, Jenstar, I wan't asking how to stop it, I just wondered what people's views are on this process.

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[Potatoman]

In visual studio .net 2005, you can view, over a period of time, activity of the cookie. The Abank cookie does no more than store user information. i think you may have contacted your "scumware" (!) elsewhere. Answerbank has never triggered my firewall, and all the spywhere tools have never suspected this cookie. Slight paranoia, methinks...

BTW, "scumware" is a very funny way of putting it!

[OBonio]

This has been going on for years.  A company called doubleclick.com have been doing it since 1998 or before.  The information they gather is very general (like how popular a site is, general trends etc) They don't know who I am so no harm done.

[Potatoman]

Hippy, iv done some research into this - When you open AB for the first time, the AB cookie isnt the only one that downoads. There are a couple more that i admit do look a bit suspicious... Turn off (or prompt) cookie in IE6 by going to tools -> privacy then advanced.

[Hippy]

Thanks all for answers. There really is no problem about blocking this stuff, I was just interested to find out if people were concerned about participating in the marketing con trick without their knowledge, permission and for free. Clearly not a ho topic. I don't thing this regular click collection has any privacy implications.

 

It is not Answerbank itself that triggers this Sumware, but the advertisers in those flashing, rolling so annoyoing adverts. The Answrbank cookie allows one to log on automatically etc. etc. and is a welcome addition to a thoroughly interesting and worthwile site.

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