Online Privacy
Where did it go?
Here you will find some privacy concerns of mine.
There is absolutely *no warranty*, express or implied for any content on this site. Any files you download or any actions you perform after reading any of this site are *At Your Own Risk* and neither I (Shawn K. Hall) nor any site, business, or individual associated with me will be held responsible if it does not work as described or otherwise does not suit your needs.
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- Microsoft "User Information": MSReg.asp - The sample demonstrates the exposure & availability of Microsoft's user information section for registered Microsoft software, which is stored in the registry, freely available to any application you run.
- Yahoo! 'YahooID' exposure: Yahoo.asp - any web site or HTML email message has the capacity to read your YahooID and with it any information stored within your Yahoo! profile or associated with it. Including email address (ie; spammer-owned websites won't have to ask for your email address - they've got it!) or
- DoubleClick - this company has advertisements on a *lot* of websites. They use beacons within the advertisements displayed to track the graphics that you see. This is 'borderline' behaviour in my opinion, because they enable you to OPT OUT. They claim that your 'unique identifier' will be overwritten when you opt out, however, this is NOT always the case. Other information is stored within the cookie that may be used to track you uniquely that though they say they will not does not demonstrate proper respect for privacy.
- ...other 'opt-out' and online spam deterrent/avoidance links here: /R/?/Ref/Spam
After you've 'opted out' of a site's program (like double-click) you should check your cookie value to verify that it has indeed been nullified. You can do that by using this script:
This script was obtained from www.bookmarklets.com. There's a *lot* more at the site if you found this one interesting. In order to use it save the link to your favorites somewhere (right click and "add shortcut to favorites" under IE). Then navigate to the site that you want to check and run the link. It will run in the current browsers context so it will determine the cookie for the current site. If you click it you'll see the cookie for this site, which shoud be some strange long number starting with "ASPSESSIONID" - that's because I'm running an IIS server and Active Server Pages.
Here is a link to my site's privacy policy, in case you're worried.<g>
