Oh no, Rob, my comment name and other info is auto-populated in the fields. How are you doing this? Are you spying on me? Are you tracking me? You fascist!
Steve - 09:12pm on 12/28/2005
If the NSA really wanted to monitor a person’s internet habits they’d track that person’s IP address and then go directly to their ISP. They aren’t going to mess around with cookies.
Rob - 09:12pm on 12/28/2005
This is a non-story, and very annoying because they keep perpetuating the myth that cookies can track where you go or that they’re some super secret “file”.
Apparently these morons have never heard of server logs. Your entire visit to a website can be tracked by following your IP through the logs.
Friggin idiots.
Rob, doesn’t your site use cookies?
Steve - 09:12pm on 12/28/2005
Plus, cookies are domain specific. If someone from Rob’s site visits my site, I cannot read the cookie that Rob’s site placed on their computer. I mean, duh. And unless your IP address changes with every request, your doings on any one specific site can be easily monitored. If you have a problem with this, you’re already using an anonymizer and have disabled cookies, flash, and JavaScript.
There is a popular belief that cookies can store information about you that you haven’t yourself provided, and that the information will be available to third parties. No. A web site can only put things in a cookie that you have told it about yourself, and no one but that website has access to that information. It’s like a “Hello, my name is Mark” nametag that you wear at an AA meeting, but when the meeting is over you put the nametag away. You don’t walk into Wal-Mart the next day and get recognized as an alcoholic.
Mark J - 10:12pm on 12/28/2005
Hey, Rob. No comment on this non-story, really, just a question. Have any of you guys been having problems with picking up viruses from following links in posted comments? Had to shut everything down and take laptop to my geek. He could not pin down exactly where, but it appears that they came in from places I have gone from links. I go to so many different sites we can’t nail down a specific source. Just wondering if anyone else has been having a problem in the last 8
2Hotel9 - 04:12am on 12/29/2005
Hmmm. Have you visited nsa.gov recently?
King of Fools - 05:12am on 12/29/2005
I would recommend running Mozilla for Firefox. If you’re running IE, edit the security settings for the Internet zone and don’t allow any activeX controls to run, signed or otherwise.
Steve - 07:12am on 12/29/2005
The other option is to use a Mac running Mac OS X.
Carrick - 08:12am on 12/29/2005
I am running Mozilla, and Geek already read me the riot act on activeX. His thinking is that these are piggybacking from newssource links I follow. I have to wait till he gets back from Florida to get the skinny in detail. He is workationing till mid-Feburary. Till then I am running full system scans every night, pain in the ass but oh well. He turned all my pertinent details over to Younger Sister, not sure how to feel about that, I guess as long as she is gentle it will be cool. Carrick, I am pretty well committed to H/P and Compaq with Windows. All the problems I have had usually are caused by myself and that jackass,I. Thanks, guys. And K, I ain’t been there in probably 6 months, and that was on my workstation computer. Only .govs I go to with the laptop are NOAA and the Naval Observatory for time sync.
2Hotel9 - 02:12pm on 12/29/2005
This webjournal almost didn’t let me post this message because it couldn’t remember my username/password and told me to enable cookies. This article is scary hype trying to make the public even more scared of those trying to protect us. As Rob over at SayAnything states, this is a non story. Read his post, and check out the comments-- they are spot-on. Take it from a computer geek! [IMG] 0 message(s) / leave message
MInTheGap's Web Journal - Bravenet Web Journal - 04:12pm on 12/29/2005
Oh no, Rob, my comment name and other info is auto-populated in the fields. How are you doing this? Are you spying on me? Are you tracking me? You fascist!
If the NSA really wanted to monitor a person’s internet habits they’d track that person’s IP address and then go directly to their ISP. They aren’t going to mess around with cookies.
This is a non-story, and very annoying because they keep perpetuating the myth that cookies can track where you go or that they’re some super secret “file”.
Apparently these morons have never heard of server logs. Your entire visit to a website can be tracked by following your IP through the logs.
Friggin idiots.
Rob, doesn’t your site use cookies?
Plus, cookies are domain specific. If someone from Rob’s site visits my site, I cannot read the cookie that Rob’s site placed on their computer. I mean, duh. And unless your IP address changes with every request, your doings on any one specific site can be easily monitored. If you have a problem with this, you’re already using an anonymizer and have disabled cookies, flash, and JavaScript.
There is a popular belief that cookies can store information about you that you haven’t yourself provided, and that the information will be available to third parties. No. A web site can only put things in a cookie that you have told it about yourself, and no one but that website has access to that information. It’s like a “Hello, my name is Mark” nametag that you wear at an AA meeting, but when the meeting is over you put the nametag away. You don’t walk into Wal-Mart the next day and get recognized as an alcoholic.
Hey, Rob. No comment on this non-story, really, just a question. Have any of you guys been having problems with picking up viruses from following links in posted comments? Had to shut everything down and take laptop to my geek. He could not pin down exactly where, but it appears that they came in from places I have gone from links. I go to so many different sites we can’t nail down a specific source. Just wondering if anyone else has been having a problem in the last 8
Hmmm. Have you visited nsa.gov recently?
I would recommend running Mozilla for Firefox. If you’re running IE, edit the security settings for the Internet zone and don’t allow any activeX controls to run, signed or otherwise.
The other option is to use a Mac running Mac OS X.
I am running Mozilla, and Geek already read me the riot act on activeX. His thinking is that these are piggybacking from newssource links I follow. I have to wait till he gets back from Florida to get the skinny in detail. He is workationing till mid-Feburary. Till then I am running full system scans every night, pain in the ass but oh well. He turned all my pertinent details over to Younger Sister, not sure how to feel about that, I guess as long as she is gentle it will be cool. Carrick, I am pretty well committed to H/P and Compaq with Windows. All the problems I have had usually are caused by myself and that jackass,I. Thanks, guys. And K, I ain’t been there in probably 6 months, and that was on my workstation computer. Only .govs I go to with the laptop are NOAA and the Naval Observatory for time sync.
This webjournal almost didn’t let me post this message because it couldn’t remember my username/password and told me to enable cookies. This article is scary hype trying to make the public even more scared of those trying to protect us. As Rob over at SayAnything states, this is a non story. Read his post, and check out the comments-- they are spot-on. Take it from a computer geek! [IMG] 0 message(s) / leave message