BEWARE?

Got a note today about a bad site: SpecificMEDIA.com

It appears to be a company collecting personal information from the Movie Fans website to sell to the advertising community. Asumption is: it is a data miner.

In the Windows "Privacy Report" tab at the bottom of IE7.

One of the statements in the company's "Summary" was: "Unique identifiers issued by a Web site or service for the purpose of identifying an individual over time."

It has shown up as being blocked by Windows Security. Do we warn people? Has anyone else noticed this spyware?

We've been discussing this for the evening at Ninjas, but we felt it should be a wider topic; I'd like some advice on this, if anyone has insights.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on May 24, 2009 at 6:25pm: Good thing for firefox and the wonderful addons!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on May 26, 2009 at 9:48am: visiting MS update.

IE-Tab works fine for that too!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by droidmaker on May 24, 2009 at 10:15pm: no shit? it's the SiteMeter that is messing us up? Yea, i put that there. It's how i keep track of activity. Is that the problem? Man, i'd hate to lose the ability to know what is going on traffic-wise...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Spindaddydad on May 24, 2009 at 10:55pm: Droid, you should be able to track the stats by clicking on the little gold box under Ning Stats... at the bottom of the far right column.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by JDoors on May 24, 2009 at 8:25am: People have different comfort levels having a third party tracking their online activities, my comfort level's very low. I use all the features and utilities available to keep my activity as private as is practical.

IMO, all third party tracking should be "Opt-In." I don't get why they can't word the Opt-In question in such a way that it doesn't scare off most people, which is what happens when they DO ask: Most people choose to Opt Out (now THERE'S a clue for ya, MOST people don't WANT to be tracked).

When they don't tell you what's going on behind the scenes, that's a clue for me that there's something not quite right about it, and that they know it (even though they may have managed to convince themselves otherwise).; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on May 24, 2009 at 9:14am: JDoors, you can set your browser to not accept third-party cookies (under privacy or security, it's usually set to accept as default) - and your anti-virus will most likely get rid of the worst tracking cookies.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by e manderthal on May 24, 2009 at 4:33pm: Funny, I just got this page that popped up on Netflix telling me to enable my cookies. I am cookie enabled.
What da hay?
It keeps returning, too. hhmmmm....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Guy on May 24, 2009 at 6:07pm: ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by beeswax on May 25, 2009 at 2:15am: I had the same problem sometime between 11 pm and midnight. Netflix customer service walked me through the fix, which was short and sweet. They are cookie-glitching for some reason.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by photo heathen on May 25, 2009 at 12:56pm: I'm getting that problem too, but only when I try to navigate to my Reviews & Lists page from my Friends & Faves page. Also, I'm only seeing a similarity % on a few people - most are showing blank.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by e manderthal on May 25, 2009 at 7:42pm: Are you on Google Chrome?
Turns out Netflix supports only IE 7 or 8, or Firefox 2.0 or higher.
If you're on Chrome, you ain't got no cookies!

COOOKIE!!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by photo heathen on May 25, 2009 at 7:50pm: Nope, I'm using Firefox 3.0.10. I tried Chrome but it was a bit too simple for my tastes. I would use IE but, well, it's crap.; ▶ Reply to This