C
Chuck
On a recent visit to PC WORLD http://www.pcworld.com/news/ Spybot alerted
me to multiple attempts to download "Double Click" onto my machine. I was
shocked. As a site that has always been "Anti-spyware" I was concerned, and
asked them what was up with their use of Double-Click, a very well known
piece of Spyware. Well they wrote me back, and I was thankful for their
reply. I found it refreshing that they did take the time to answer me back,
and thought some of you might enjoy their reply as well, since it is also
very educational.
Here now is that reply........
===============================
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback
Thank you for your message, Chuck. We appreciate your feedback and take it
seriously.
First, please be assured PCWorld.com never uses spyware.
Some ad control software alerts about the cookies on PCWorld.com because
its settings are not very picky about how it defines "spyware." Such ad
control software erroneously reports all cookies as bad. As PC World editor
Andrew Brandt notes, "That's just plain silly in some cases." But
PCWorld.com *never* captures personal information, such as a user name.
Such ad control software may, for instance, misreport Doubleclick, which
serves ads for PCWorld.com and hundreds of other sites. PCWorld.com has
*never* permitted Doubleclick to capture personal information from
PCWorld.com visitors. Within that essential consideration for your
privacy, Doubleclick gives us the best deal for serving ads. As a result,
we are able to keep PCWorld.com, including the extensive archives of past
issues and information, open for free.
Some ad control software may also misreport HitBox cookies. HitBox is the
agency which is contracted to do counting oin PCWorld.com. Web sites must
count visitors in order to keep track of what content is doing well or
poorly, understand our audience, improve our services, and in order to help
us to sell the advertising which enables us to provide PCWorld.com to you
free. HitBox also tracks (as aggregate numbers only) the screen
resolutions our visitors use. That lets us know how best to configure our
pages for you. In some cases, HitBox data can be very persistent, with
the cookie following you from site to site, but that depends on how some
companies construct the contracts with Hitbox. In the case of PCWorld.com,
the cookie can be used *only* for monitoring traffic on PCWorld.com and
other IDG publishing sites. It tells us, for instance (and, again, only in
aggregate numbers), how long visitors read articles, and how many times a
week or month they visit the site. That is all it is permitted to do.
PCWorld.com will function normally if you choose to block those cookies.
You will still be able to read the content. However, blocking Doubleclick
cookies could affect your site experience by allowing the same ad to be
displayed to you repeatedly. Ads on PCWorld.com have "frequency caps" to
prevent them from being displayed more than once to the same visitor, but
if cookies are blocked those frequency caps have no way to function.
Blocking HitBox could also cause HitBox to report every time you click a
link to go to a different page within PCWorld.com as a different "unique"
visitor, which artificially inflate our "unique visitors" count by a tiny
fraction of a percentage, but would not affect your experience of the site.
There is an important distinction between such tracking cookies and
"spyware." The cookies used on PCWorld.com are *not* spyware. Spyware is
actively malicious software which seeks to uncover personal information
about you which you may--quite reasonably--consider private. Some spyware
attempts to hide its existence. Sometimes it even installs applications on
your hard drive. PC World's editors have written many, many times that we
are vociferiously against such spyware. It truly is invasive and unwelcome,
and in the content our editors have written and will write, they help you
and all of our readers get rid of it. There is no spyware associated with
visiting PCWorld.com.
Finally, please be aware that some companies which purport to sell
"anti-spyware" applications are trying to induce fear to make the threat
seem much greater than it is. Such software companies believe that causing
unreasonable, unrealistic fear is a great sales tool. Unfortunately, fear
sells a lot of worthless $30 programs.
It can be hard to know whom to trust, but we believe it is not hard when it
comes to PC World. We have made our position abundantly clear, and we have
earned our reputation for editorial excellence and integrity.
In order to understand how seriously we take the privacy of our site's
visitors, you may wish to read PCWorld.com's privacy statement, which you
can find at www.pcworld.com/resource/privacy.asp You will probably find
points two and three (about how we use cookies and clear GIFs) of
particular interest.
Thanks again for your message, and for your interest in PCWorld.com.
Michael England
PCWorld.com Customer Service
me to multiple attempts to download "Double Click" onto my machine. I was
shocked. As a site that has always been "Anti-spyware" I was concerned, and
asked them what was up with their use of Double-Click, a very well known
piece of Spyware. Well they wrote me back, and I was thankful for their
reply. I found it refreshing that they did take the time to answer me back,
and thought some of you might enjoy their reply as well, since it is also
very educational.
Here now is that reply........
===============================
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback
Thank you for your message, Chuck. We appreciate your feedback and take it
seriously.
First, please be assured PCWorld.com never uses spyware.
Some ad control software alerts about the cookies on PCWorld.com because
its settings are not very picky about how it defines "spyware." Such ad
control software erroneously reports all cookies as bad. As PC World editor
Andrew Brandt notes, "That's just plain silly in some cases." But
PCWorld.com *never* captures personal information, such as a user name.
Such ad control software may, for instance, misreport Doubleclick, which
serves ads for PCWorld.com and hundreds of other sites. PCWorld.com has
*never* permitted Doubleclick to capture personal information from
PCWorld.com visitors. Within that essential consideration for your
privacy, Doubleclick gives us the best deal for serving ads. As a result,
we are able to keep PCWorld.com, including the extensive archives of past
issues and information, open for free.
Some ad control software may also misreport HitBox cookies. HitBox is the
agency which is contracted to do counting oin PCWorld.com. Web sites must
count visitors in order to keep track of what content is doing well or
poorly, understand our audience, improve our services, and in order to help
us to sell the advertising which enables us to provide PCWorld.com to you
free. HitBox also tracks (as aggregate numbers only) the screen
resolutions our visitors use. That lets us know how best to configure our
pages for you. In some cases, HitBox data can be very persistent, with
the cookie following you from site to site, but that depends on how some
companies construct the contracts with Hitbox. In the case of PCWorld.com,
the cookie can be used *only* for monitoring traffic on PCWorld.com and
other IDG publishing sites. It tells us, for instance (and, again, only in
aggregate numbers), how long visitors read articles, and how many times a
week or month they visit the site. That is all it is permitted to do.
PCWorld.com will function normally if you choose to block those cookies.
You will still be able to read the content. However, blocking Doubleclick
cookies could affect your site experience by allowing the same ad to be
displayed to you repeatedly. Ads on PCWorld.com have "frequency caps" to
prevent them from being displayed more than once to the same visitor, but
if cookies are blocked those frequency caps have no way to function.
Blocking HitBox could also cause HitBox to report every time you click a
link to go to a different page within PCWorld.com as a different "unique"
visitor, which artificially inflate our "unique visitors" count by a tiny
fraction of a percentage, but would not affect your experience of the site.
There is an important distinction between such tracking cookies and
"spyware." The cookies used on PCWorld.com are *not* spyware. Spyware is
actively malicious software which seeks to uncover personal information
about you which you may--quite reasonably--consider private. Some spyware
attempts to hide its existence. Sometimes it even installs applications on
your hard drive. PC World's editors have written many, many times that we
are vociferiously against such spyware. It truly is invasive and unwelcome,
and in the content our editors have written and will write, they help you
and all of our readers get rid of it. There is no spyware associated with
visiting PCWorld.com.
Finally, please be aware that some companies which purport to sell
"anti-spyware" applications are trying to induce fear to make the threat
seem much greater than it is. Such software companies believe that causing
unreasonable, unrealistic fear is a great sales tool. Unfortunately, fear
sells a lot of worthless $30 programs.
It can be hard to know whom to trust, but we believe it is not hard when it
comes to PC World. We have made our position abundantly clear, and we have
earned our reputation for editorial excellence and integrity.
In order to understand how seriously we take the privacy of our site's
visitors, you may wish to read PCWorld.com's privacy statement, which you
can find at www.pcworld.com/resource/privacy.asp You will probably find
points two and three (about how we use cookies and clear GIFs) of
particular interest.
Thanks again for your message, and for your interest in PCWorld.com.
Michael England
PCWorld.com Customer Service