Tesugen

Web Beacon

New word to me: web beacon. It means an image on a web page that has a unique name so that a request for it can examine already stored cookies and send new cookies—all for the sake of tracking people’s paths around the web.

I first read about this in Wired a year or two ago, and they described how companies send out HTML spam with these web beacons (although this term wasn’t used then) in them, in order to know when a spam message has reached its final destination and been opened by someone. This is valuable information, I guess.

This page at Yahoo describes their policy regarding web beacons. They have a link so you can opt out, but it seems to set a cookie so you’ll have to opt out from every browser on every computer you use.

The above was posted to my personal weblog on April 9, 2002. My name is Peter Lindberg and I am a thirtysomething software developer and dad living in Stockholm, Sweden. Here, you’ll find posts in English and Swedish about whatever happens to interest me for the moment.

Posted around the same time:

The seven most recent posts:

  1. Tesugen Replaced (October 7)
  2. My Year of MacBook Troubles (May 16)
  3. Tesugen Turns Five (March 21)
  4. Gustaf Nordenskiöld om keramik kontra kläddesign (December 10, 2006)
  5. Se till att ha två buffertar för oförutsedda utgifter (October 30, 2006)
  6. Bra tips för den som vill börja fondspara (October 7, 2006)
  7. Light-Hearted Parenting Tips (September 16, 2006)
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