Another Privacy Risk: Web Bugs
One of the greatest discoveries made by spammers is web bugs. Most of you have heard about cookies and know how to avoid or delete them, but what do you know about web bugs? Well, they are a form of spyware and are very efficient in what they do: tracking your every move. When a spammer places a web bug into one of his e-mails, he will be able to tell exactly when you opened that e-mail, and if the e-mail address he has for you is valid. The scary part is that you will not even know you’re being tracked by these web bugs. If you think you’re safe from this tracking, you are wrong.
Even if you don’t open any e-mail unless you know who it’s from, you are still at risk. Besides spammers, Internet marketers make use of the advantages of web bugs. Did you ever notice the ads for items that you shopped for popping up when you open your browser? That is because there were web bugs placed in a web site you visited.
There is a difference between cookies and web bugs. Browsers are able to reject cookies, but web bugs are generated as a Graphic Interchange Format (GIF). Because GIFs are so frequently used all over the Internet, browsers will normally just accept them. Anyone familiar with GIFs knows that they are images, so how is it that they’re not visible in e-mail and web sites? Spammers and marketers are very shrewd when it comes to web bugs. Spammers insert a tiny GIF, no larger than 1 X 1 pixels into their e-mails. Marketers “hide” their web bugs right in the web site’s logo. Since the GIF is disguised as a color in the background, you could look for it and still not see it.
Have you ever sent or received an e-greeting card? This is becoming common practice for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc. It’s so much simpler than going out to buy the card, then running to the post office to mail it. When you send an e-greeting card, you are asked if you want to be notified when the recipient sees it. Most people agree to this because they want to make sure it was “delivered”. Web bugs are then set into action and will notify you about the receipt of your e-greeting card.
What really has privacy advocates up in arms about web bugs is the amount of personal information that is gathered. Putting all of this information in a spammer’s hands could be very risky. Think about it; a simple web bug will let the spammer know your IP address, the exact URL the web bug was attached to, when that web site was opened and what time it was opened. In other words, your Internet activities are being monitored by teeny little stalkers.
Privacy advocates are most concerned about the fact that web bugs are placed on web sites, tracking your Internet travels, when you never consented to this tracking. You also were never aware of it. The marketers that place the web bugs do not have to follow the web site’s privacy policy because they are third parties. The terms of the privacy policy doesn’t apply to them, so there is nothing that you can do, because there was no violation.
Web bugs are a major risk to the privacy of every Internet user, no matter who places them. It doesn’t matter if they come from a spammer or a marketer, web bugs gather a large amount of personal information and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. It helps if you turn off your browser cookies, but using a proxy server would be a safer choice. Web bugs can’t track you when you are using a proxy server because your IP address would be hidden; the IP address of the proxy server would be visible to whoever placed the web bugs. This will keep your privacy safe.