Thursday, February 05, 2009
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Whitehouse.gov tracks you
The whitehouse.gov site is using the services of a private 
web tracking company and that private company is under no constraints, 
at least not as indicated by the whitehouse privacy statement, to 
protect the data that users disgorge to it whenever they access the 
whitehouse.gov website or to refrain from cross-linking that data to 
other, non-whitehouse.gov web accesses that also use the 
webtrendslive.com service.

Use
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
to block the webtrendslive.com cookie
Don't allow 3rd party trackers

thx to Karl http://www.cavebear.com/privacy-policy.html
The whitehouse.gov loads a chunk of 685 lines of Webtrends 
javascript that assists that web bug by dredging through the user's 
computer and building a URL extension to be sent to the web bug's home 
site when the web bug 1x1 image is fetched.  In my case here is the 
data that the whitehouse.gov site sends to that non-governmental, 
private company, webtrends, when I look at the privacy policy:

http://statse.webtrendslive.com/dcs0l9nq800000ctek411lue6_2c8b/dcs.gif?&dcsdat=1232551756592&dcssip=ww \
w.whitehouse.gov&dcsuri=/about/white_house_101/&dcsref=http://www.whitehouse.gov/privacy/&dcscfg=1&WT .\
co_f = 29c77f877e6cfcdfbb81232561960511 &WT.vtid=29c77f877e6cfcdfbb81232561960511&WT.vtvs=1232551160511&W\
T.tz=-8&WT.bh=7&WT.ul=en- US&WT.cd=24&WT.sr=1024x768&WT.jo=Yes&WT.ti=White%20House %20101&WT.js=Yes&WT.j\
v=1.7&WT.ct=unknown&WT.bs=883x559&WT.fv=9.0&WT.slv=Not %20enabled&WT.tv=8.6.0&WT.dl=0&WT.ssl=0&WT.es=ww\
w.whitehouse.gov/about/white_house_101/&WT.vt_f_tlh=1232551559


Because nothing is ever erased
once we get face recognition software that really works that all of 
those old photographs on Facebook, high school yearbooks, street 
cameras, private security cameras and the like can be retroactively 
scanned to create a video history of each person.

the presence of the web vandal
could "chill" citizen's use of governmental web sites to obtain 
government services:   imagine that something like match.com  or facebook.com
would like to know that a give web access has also been making queries 
to governmental sites about AIDS.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/education/

the gory details being leaked, it's all in the
Javascript file used to create the string:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/includes/webtrends.js

dcssip: the window.location.hostname (whitehouse.gov)
dcsuri: window.location.pathname (the bit after the / in the URL)
dcsref: the referring URL (the URL that linked to this page)
dcscfg: always set to '1', apparently
WT.co_f: if you have a WebTrends cookie, this contains its id
WT.vtid: also the id
WT.vtvs: time since last visit
WT.tz: your time zone
WT.bh: the current hour
WT.ul: "user language", or what your browser is set to accept
WT.cd: color depth in bits
WT.sr: screen resolution
WT.jo: is Java enabled?
WT.ti: the title of the current page
WT.js: is Javascript enabled (kind of a stupid data point, really)
WT.jv: javascript version supported by the browser
WT.ct: connection type, if known (wireless?)
WT.bs: browser viewport size
WT.fv: Adobe Flash version
WT.slv: Microsoft SilverLight version
WT.tv: always "8.6.0", probably Web Trends script version
WT.dl: always 0, not sure what this is
WT.ssl: whether the site was accessed using SSL / https
WT.es: full hostname and path (dcssip + dcsuri)
WT.vt_f_tlh: the current time

Yes, it should be acknowledged in the privacy policy.

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