[IP] more on Sleazy Ebay doubleclick practices *and* thanks Eudora!
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 15, 2004 10:25:12 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, Ip <ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] Sleazy Ebay doubleclick practices *and* thanks Eudora!
For IP, if you wish.
From: "M"
On the Mac, I recently updated my Eudora to the latest beta release.
I can't recall exactly when this feature was enabled, but when I mouse
over an HTML URL, Eudora opens a small box and displays the entire
URL string - the real string which is passed to a browser - not the
display string. Guest what I noticed? Every All Favorites HTML
URL link is laundered through ebay.doubleclick.net, with what appears
to be a unique ID for the user.
I don't know if it'll work for the ebay stalking cookie, but you
can defang the regular doubleclick cookie. Go to
http://www.doubleclick.com/us/about_doubleclick/privacy/
and click on the 'Opt Out' icon.
This sets the data value of your .doubleclick.net cookie to
"OPT_OUT" and so your data gets mixed with everyone else who
opts out.
While you're at it, you might want to think about the
consequences of the most popular search engine's id cookie.
Unfortunately, you need that one for the company's free
webmail to work. As a result, I use different browsers
(IE and Mozilla) for search and webmail, and block the
search engine's cookie in Mozilla, my main browser.
Maintaining privacy is approaching impossibility. We
need a new ethic of what data it is appropriate to
gather and hold about individuals. In the past,
data-harvesting was cost-limited. With computers
and the net, it is just too easy.
Peter Trei
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