On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 18:35:43 GMT, WayneH wrote:

On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 07:25:19 GMT, "Mike Ruskai"
wrote:


If you don't have cookies enabled, the "beacon" won't work anyway, so
there's nothing to opt-out of.

Not *entirely* accurate, Mike. See:

http://www.allaboutcookies.org/web-beacons/

for more details, but the web bug can still gather some minimal data
without cookies being enabled. In any case, I don't think its
possible to use Yahoo groups, mail, or other stuff without logging in,
which also requires cookies.

No, what I said is entirely accurate. Without cookies enabled, no user
information can be retrieved by the web beacon, in cookies stored by that
domain previously. As such, it would be impossible for the server at the
other end to determine whether or not the person fetching the image has
opted out of being tracked - the IP address can be stored, but that is
true of any connection with any protocol.

Opting out means that the server still requests your user ID cookie, and
if it's in the opt-out list, does no further processing. So in effect,
when you opt-out of such tracking, you are not actually preventing your
activity from being tracked. You are merely indicating that when you are
tracked, no information is to be saved.

Without cookies enabled, tracking is impossible, and therefore opting out
is also impossible.


--
- Mike

Remove 'spambegone.net' and reverse to send e-mail.