> For example, Pekoe, a product of New England Internet
> Co., (_NEICO_) added a component to its tracking tool to
> allow content providers to measure where visitors go
> after they leave the site."It's the only product of its
> kind which can track Web surfers after they leave your
> site," said Peter Bohush, president of the Marlborough,
> Mass. company. Pricing depends on licensing arrangements
> but an annual license is nearly six figures, Bohush said.
Based on the same principle as a Fujitsu paper in Issue 3 of the Web Journal,
these fellows have developed a $100,000 proxy that ADDS ad banners to pages.
Furthermore, it edits all the outgoing urls from a page to point back to the
home site, where a redirecting script continues to monitor your every step.
And for new users, the effect is completely hidden: it's like stepping in a
wad of gum: you can't scrape it off!
For example, I pointed it at my home page, and it replaced the embedded link
to MIT with:
http://146.115.109.131/cgi-bin/Pekoe68ghsd932459sdljs9034590we90234590234234905290234/http://web.mit.edu/
If anyone else wants to test it, see http://www.neico.com/bookmark.html
I can't begin to fathom the legal, ethical, performance, and privacy concerns
of this amazingly brazen piece of s***, er, sorry, software.
Astonished,
Rohit
--- Rohit Khare -- World Wide Web Consortium -- Technical Staff w: 617/253-5884 -- f: 617/258-5999 -- h: 617/491-5030 NE43-354, MIT LCS, 545 Tech Square, Cambridge, MA 02139