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Feature & Member Support Questions about how to use the features on the Knife Network web site? Problems logging in? Post them in here. |
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#1
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Third party cookies
Is it considered proper etiquette that the banners from some certain makers on the forum attempt to add a cookie to one's computer whenever one reads a thread they have posted on? I fail to understand why a Knife Network poster's banner has to cookie my machine. There's enough intrusion on the internet as it is.
My browser security is set up to "prompt for third party cookies", so every time I go to a thread some people have posted on I end up having to click "block" several times. I have contacted the particular website hosting service that does this, requesting an explanation, but never received any reply. Thus, I ask here. Thank you. |
#2
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I don't know if that's usual or not, but I set mine to block all third parties and haven't had any problems. I only prompt on the first party ones, which I usually click the apply to all box and block except for forums like this one. If you don't want to autoblock them, you can check the apply to all box when you block the banner cookies, it shouldn't take long to get them all into your block list. I think the reason for the cookies is to see how many people see their banner regularly, so they know if it's good advertising or not.
__________________ ~Andrew W. "NT Cough'n Monkey" Petkus |
#3
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Mike, I know you and I have had this discussion before on my Banner and hope that its not still causing the problem. If I remember correctly you just accepted mine or something like that. If the host in question is the one im using maybe I can be of assistance and do a little research. Let me know if theres any thing I can do to help. I would have to agree though.....it can be a reall annoyance.
Shane |
#4
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It seems to be a session cookie, Shane. Every time I "allow" the cookie from anyone using blademakers.com, once I close my browser it pesters me again when I come back to the forum. Obviously, it can get to be a PITA if I don't "allow" it then view other threads you've posted on. A lot of makers have banners here, but blademakers seem to be the only cookie machine...
If Chris had responded to my email with a reasonable justification I would not have posed this here. I never got a reply. Thus, I ask here if it is proper etiquette to do this. If the admins feel it is ok, then I accept it and deal with it as I have been. However, intrusiveness on the internet is a major PITA and if it is not appropriate then blademakers.com should make the necessary adjustments. I have my browser cookie security set as I do so I can see just where there are little sneakies being laid on my machine behind the scenes. It is surprising just how many legitimate sites allow unseen cookies from their advertisers. This certainly isn't a bad one, but just points up how intrusive the internet experience can be. Basically, I ask the question why do you have to see a counter for how many times I view your banner on different threads on a forum of mostly other makers? |
#5
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Shane, it was very considerate of you to remove your banner in response to my being upset with the cookies. Very considerate! I'll never forget that.
However, it seems not to be an issue with KNet Administration or someone would have addressed it here by now. So be it. I have manually entered blademakers.com into my blocked-cookies list. I have tested it against Bud's posts and the cookie-alert window doesn't come up. This will thus work fine for me, personally. Since no one else seems to take umbrage with the intrusion, I would ask that you please consider reinstating your banner. There is no reason you should cause yourself loss because of me. You paid for that banner! Thanks, again, Shane! You're a good man! I learn from the lesson on consideration you have taught.... Last edited by fitzo; 08-08-2004 at 01:29 PM. |
#6
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Mike,
What would you have me do about it? All I can recommend is that you block all cookies, or target and isolate the one's the offend you. Being tracked is part of the internet ... the moment you log on, establish a connection IP, you're being tracked ... by your isp and all other network connections you travel down. Leaving a footprint for a banner tracker is nothing to be concerned with, assuming you're only worried with security issues. If you're worried about tracking issues, you need to block them all. 90% of all cookies are used to track something, such as your visits to sites and authenticating your preferences. There's a lot of bad press about malicious cookies, but most people don't even know the difference in a good one and a bad one. Let me know what you would like done here and I'll try to assist. We're not going to globally ban cookies. But I might start a thread with cookied domains and allow you to create your own block management. For others ... just set cookies to med-high and you'll never have to worry. If they have a compact privacy policy then you have no concerns. All others will be blocked. Alex __________________ Alex Whetsell [======]~~~~~~~> Atlantavirtual.com Atlanta NOC |
#7
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Alex,
Thank you, you've responded, which is all you can do short of objecting to them. You've stated your policy, it's your site, and I can accept your policies to be a member here. I cannot say I like the idea that a maker's banner cookies a machine; malicious or benign, I see it as intrusion. To the best of my ability to tell, there is only one hosting site represented here that does that. However, I am not naive, and realize they are everywhere. As I stated in my last response, I will deal with it on a local basis, and now understand better how to eliminate those 3rd-party cookies I don't like. I use both Adaware and Spyhunter to clean my machine frequently, and manually block those I don't like. My complaint resulted because I have "prompt for 3rd party cookies" clicked, and it was annoying to have the blademakers.com cookies show repeatedly every time I clicked on a thread a member of that service posted on. Clicking "block all cookies" resulted in blocking the cookies from KNET, too, so that wasn't a valid fix. Entering the host manually seems to have fixed that. Thus, I thank you for your response. I wanted those interested to be aware of the practice in this specific instance. Adequate information has been supplied so anyone who choses to do as I have can accomplish it. Again, I thank you.... Last edited by fitzo; 08-08-2004 at 10:24 PM. |
#8
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I know that this is an old thread, but I've just now come across it. I would like to address this issue to clear my name and the BladeMakers.com website name.
Mike emailed me about this issue, and I responded to him with the following email on July 27th 2004. Here is a copy of the email I sent. If anyone would like further information, feel free to contact me. Thanks -chris -------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 20:52:41 -0700 (PDT) From: "Chris Crawford" <chris_crawford@yahoo.com> View Contact Details View Contact Details Subject: Re: (BladeMakers - Contact) - 3rd party cookies To: fitzo1@ameritech.net CC: chris_crawford@yahoo.com Hello Mike, Thanks for the email and letting me know your concern about 3rd party cookies coming from BladeMakers.com. Please allow me to explain what's going on. I'll give you both a short version and a longer more technical version in case you are interested. Well as for the short version, even though Internet Explorer gives you a message that a cookie is being created from BladeMakers.com, it actually is not. In fact, if you delete all of your cookies and watch the cookie directory, you will never see a cookie be written for BladeMakers.com. Now for the longer version and a description of what's going on. Please allow me to first explain what is happening, and then I will explain why it's happening. When you pull up a banner that links back to BladeMakers.com, rather than a cookie being created, what is actually happening is a session variable is being created. A session variable is similar to a cookie in that it is a storage area in memory which information can be saved. The difference is that the session variable is never saved to your computer, and it disappears when you close your browser. A cookie stays around until the expiration date which is set by the website expires. If you do a right click on the SKIVIE's banner and look at the properties, you will see that it does not actually link back to a .jpg image, but rather to the address http://shaneivie.blademakers.com/Ima...ent_Value=1041. All of the images and information found on any BladeMakers.com website is saved in a database. When you access Image_Bonus.asp and pass it a identity value, Image_Bonus.asp looks in the database for the image with the value 1041, retrieves it, and passes it back to the user. The user simply sees it as an image of type .jpg. OK, keep that in mind as I temporarily jump to something else. If you notice, almost all users who have a website at Blademakers.com have a web address which starts off as some-name.blademakers.com. For instance, if I had a business called Joe Knives, my address may be something like joeknives.blademakers.com. Now, any web address that ends in blademakers.com is nothing more than a link which points to back to one website and one database. However, the visitor to the site will only see the relative information for the site he is interested in. For example, Joe Knives. When the user types in the address, my program rips off the first part of the name, joeknives for example, and looks that name up in a database. This is where the session variable comes in. When the name joeknives is found, the program finds the user_number that's associated with joeknives and writes it to a session variable called User_Num. So, if you were looking at joeknives website, you will only see the knives, shop tour, etc... that relate to Joe Knives because the database is only going to return pictures and information matching joeknives' User_Number. This makes it look like each website has its own database, when actually all knife pictures and other information is kept in one huge database. So, the question now is why are you getting the cookie message when your browser tries to display a banner, or any image for that matter, linked form BladeMakers.com. Well, remember earlier when we looked at the properties of the SKIVIE's banner? When you try to display that image, the program on the website has to lookup who shaneivie.blademakers.com is, temporarily write the User_Num for shaneivie to a session variable, call the program that pulls the image from the database, and pass that session variable to the program so that it knows which image to return. I'm not sure why Internet Explorer sees a session variable in the same way that it does a cookie. Keep in mind that session variables are never written to your hard drive, and they go away when you close your browser. I have my internet security setting set at the default which is medium and it works fine without giving me any messages or warnings. I would assume that you have yours set higher since you are getting the alerts. Here is a solution to the problem if you are interested... In your Internet Explorer, click on Tools in the top menu, then on Internet Options and the Privacy tab. In the box at the bottom, click Edit. Under Addresses of Web Sites type "blademakers.com" and click the Add button. Once you do this, the message will not pop up when you see pictures or banners which come from BladeMakers.com. Let me assure you that I have no interest in capturing any information from anyone who visits my site or views an image link connected back to my site. I'm just a part time knifemaker who created this website to give other knifemakers an easy way to maintain their own websites, and to make a little money on the side. I'm the only one who maintainers the site, and I pretty much just do it in my free time. With all of the spyware out there I can understand and appreciate your concern with the cookie issue. I hope I've done a good job of explaining what is going on, and why it's happening. I have no problem with you talking to Alex about the problem if you feel you need do, but if you do please forward him this email as I have explained here what is going on. I'm out of town working this week, and that's why I'm just now getting around to answering the email. I'm actually working on my laptop in a hotel room in Jackson Mississippi. I'll have a temporary cell phone with me for the rest of this week, and you are welcome to give me a call if you would like to talk more about this, or anything else for that matter. I love to talk to other knifemakers. My cell number for the rest of the week will be XXX-XXX-XXXX. (Phone Number Removed 12/17/04) Thanks again, and sorry for creating such a long email. Pleas respond to this message when get an opportunity. Thanks -chris --- fitzo1@ameritech.net wrote: > Hello, Chris, > > I have to say that I find it a little bit > aggravating that everyone on > KnifeNetwork who has a banner in their sig line that > uses blademakers > tries to cookie my machine every time I try to read > a thread that they > have responded on. Examples would be nifeman and > SKIVIE. Even if I allow > the cookie, it tries to do it the next time I enter > a thread they've > responded to again. It is not fair to invade > someone's machine in this > manner simply because they read on a forum. > > I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond > before I complained to > Alex. > > Thank you. > > mike "fitzo" > > > ===== Chris Crawford Knives Custom Knives, Handmade by Chris Crawford http://www.chriscrawford.com/knives __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail |
#9
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Wow, Chris, that be an old thread!
I want to say that, with utter sincerity, I never received the email. Who knows why, sometimes they just never show up, but I hope you will believe me. i was definitely looking for it, even in the "bulk" folder. I had that "prompt for 3rd party cookies" turned on at the time and it was driving me nuts clicking and clicking to get rid of it on every thread Shane or Bud had posted on. I eventually got it fixed with help I received here. I hope you will accept my apology for getting pissed, and hope you can understand where my ire was coming from. I had asked Shane about this at the time, before I ever posted here, and didn't run directly to the forum without having written you first. When I didn't get a response, I posted here, and Alex set me straight. While I now understand much better, and your posting the email clarified things even further, I hope you will also consider how aggravated I got having to "multi-click" every thread to kill what appeared to be a cookie. Once again, I extend my sincere apologies for creating any hassle or embarassment. It was my ignorance. Last edited by fitzo; 12-17-2004 at 01:00 PM. |
#10
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Hey Mike, no problem. I can understand where you were coming from and your point of view at the time. I guess we get so trusting in email that I never considered the email may not have made it to you. I really should have followed up better to make sure you got an answer. Thanks for writing the reply, and I look forward to seeing you around the forums. -chris
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