January 25, 2008

FYI - crosspost: Who is watching you!

Remember what I warned you ALL about TEXT ANALYTICS?? The wikipedia entry on that is .. ahem .. horseshit and I wonder if IT has been data mined (Hm MMMMM...) Don't miss out on the fascinating reads about Project Pathfinder/Cia.
As well Project Pathfinder DoD.

OH, probably not - you've had your mind on OTHER things, eh??

Well, here's one I just caught FYI --

spy-gadgets-icon I read an article today about how Adobe tracks user usage using a sneaky address of 192.168.112.2O7. The short of it is that when you launch a CS3 application the application pings out to what looks like an internal IP address: 192.168.112.2O7. Turns out that 192.168.112.2O7.net is owned by Omniture, a huge behavioral analytics firm.

After reading the article I wanted to add the 2O7.Net address to my block list in ISA. First I checked the MVPS Hosts File on my ISA server to see if this address was already being blocked. Good news since the MVPS Hosts File is already redirecting to my localhost address (127.0.0.1), effectively blocking the destination address. If you have a look at the MVPS Hosts file you will see many companies that are using the 2O7.net address, presumably for tracking your usage.

imageIt's also possible to block connection attempts if you are using OpenDNS (you are using OpenDNS, aren't you?!) by selecting Block a domain.

So is this a problem for you? Well, I would prefer to know who is watching what I do, and to do it in a more open and honest way... How about you?

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