Spying the spies

AS NET usage keeps growing by leaps and bounds advertisers have started shifting their focus to the Net to gather as much information as possible about customer preferences and tastes. Towards this objective, many customer tracking 'spy tools' that intrude on our privacy have been developed. Web Bug is one among them.

Web Bug

A web page contains many component files, namely, graphic files, sound files, script files and Java applets, embedded in the main HTML file. It is not necessary that all these files should be in the same server. Some of them can be accessed from other servers in the Net.

When you access a web page from a server, the browser provides different types of data to the web server (example: IP address of the machine, time and date of access, browser type, the site from which information reached the current site, monitor resolution and the like).

If you want a good idea of the kind of information that gets passed on to the server while accessing a web page, access the service at privacy.net/analyze or ipid.shat.net.

As mentioned above, the page that you accessed may contain some files that are to be downloaded from other servers. Let us assume that the site has given a link to a picture file stored in another server. This means, your browser has to establish a communication link with this server to download the picture.

When you download the picture file, the host server also gains access to your personal data. Besides capturing data, the service can plant a cookie (a small text file that can act as a tag that helps the server identify you whenever you browse the site later.

For more information, try the link home.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie-spec.html) in your hard disk and keep on monitoring your browsing habits and other personal details.

Some advertisement sites use this technique to grab this kind of information without your knowledge. To achieve this, they make you access a transparent GIF file - a particular format for a picture file - with one pixel area.

While accessing the file, they record the information about you as described above. This small picture is known as the Web Bug. It is also called clear GIFs or invisible GIFs.

The web page is not the only place where the Web Bug makes its presence. Any HTML enabled application is vulnerable to the Web Bug attack.

In Word documents, this bug helps track the people who read the documents. For a demo, download the word document available at privacycenter.du.edu/demos/bugged.doc and read it through Word - while reading the document you have to be linked to the Net to load the picture from the server.

With innovations in the e-mail client technology, almost all mail clients now support HTML e-mails. This provides immense possibilities for the web bug authors to deploy the technique in situations so far untouched by this menace.

By incorporating a Web Bug, an e-mail author can track the fate of his e-mail - he will be able to know when it is read and to whom the mail gets forwarded.

Having understood the capability of a Web Bug, let us examine some of the programs that identify the spies automatically while we browse.

Bugnosis

Bugnosis is a free service that detects the presence of a graphic that can be suspected as a web bug. The program examines the web page and if it finds one with features that are generally associated with a web bug, it alerts you with a sound and presents the details about the located web bugs in a separate window.

Bugnosis places the bugs in the window and present the more harmful ones in highlighted red colour. Please note that the graphics identified by the software as a Web Bug need not necessarily be a bug - but it gives you some warning.

This free browser add-on that functions with IE5 and above can be installed from the site bugnosis.org. The program once installed gets attached to the browser tool bar and starts functioning automatically.

Idcide

IDcide is another browser add-on that keeps you informed of the possible occurrence of web bugs hidden in a web page and persistent cookies (designed to keep information over a long period). After installing the software, you will find three icons in the IE tool bar. The single eye icon tracks the page that you access currently; the multiple-eye icon is used to monitor the activities of a tracking network that profiles your activities silently with the help of other sites and the hat icon can be used to make changes in the program's configuration. The program can be downloaded from the link idcide.com/pages/per-intro.htm.

World Time

The Net has made us global citizens in the sense that you can access the service without bothering about time and place. We do not need to worry whether it is midnight or early morning or whatever. But time is still important to conduct our daily activities. It can be irritating for a person in the U.S. to be called over phone from India when it is daytime here. Naturally, it will help to have a device that can tell immediately you the current local time in any country in the world. If you are on the look out for such a product, here is one.

Apart from displaying the local time, this program can instantaneously convert one currency to another, one unit of measurements to another and to cap it all it offers a feature- rich calculator also. To download the program check out the site breitling.com/eng00/aero/bwt/index.html.

A request to the readers

The author gets letters from readers asking for information on various Net resources that are related to their spheres of activity. Instead of personally responding to each query, it would be more appropriate to present the resource details in the future issues of this column itself so that it will be beneficial to all the readers. In this context, I request the readers, who already have some information on Net resources related to their subjects, to e-mail them so that they can be used (with due acknowledgement) while we address the particular subject in one of the forthcoming issues.

J. Murali

(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)

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