[LINK] How Websites load

[Rick Welykochy]

Richard Chirgwin wrote:

> Alex - thanks! So it IS just slack developers.
>
> Jan - my problem is that if I block the trackers, I won't see what
> people are doing! I could simply block ads, but then I won't know whose
> ad servers are being pains in the backside!

I use <http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm>
"Blocking Unwanted Parasites using the hosts file"

which are some 16,000+ additions to your /etc/hosts file or equiv.
on Winders, i.e. telling the OS that crap.doublick.net is actually
your local host (127.0.0.1). Works a treat. Pages load much quicker
and less tracking occurs.

The result is that flash and animated GIF ads show up as frames on the
page indicating the ad host is not responding. That way, you can indeed
see who the culprits are quite easily.

I very rarely do encounter a site that just don't work correctly with this
type of blocking. But do you want to use a web site that insists on
cross tracaking you to other sites?

I believe this info was originally found on Link.

Straying a bit from the topic ...
A much harder (but doable) task is to stop super cookies from tracking
you. But have a read here if you are interested:

<http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/blog/new-breed-super-cookie-defies-removal-almost>

   "More than half of the internet’s top web sites use a little known
    capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information
    about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies
    in their privacy policies."

IMHO, the sooner sites move to using HTML5 and dump Flash, the better.


cheers
rickw


-- 
------------------------------------
Rick Welykochy || Vitendo Consulting

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
      -- James Joyce