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.

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by JDoors on May 23, 2009 at 9:10am: No "insights," but I definitely agree it's worth a mention as it specifically targets the audience here.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Guy on May 23, 2009 at 9:38am: http://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/2007/01/ban-smbot-specific-media-is-...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on May 23, 2009 at 7:43pm: Link doesn't work, is it just me?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by e manderthal on May 23, 2009 at 7:52pm: No, it's not just you.
It worked an hour ago, but it's broken now.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on May 23, 2009 at 8:12pm: The conspiracy thickens....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Guy on May 24, 2009 at 7:35am: Seems to be working fine now.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on May 23, 2009 at 12:16pm: Collecting personal information from this site - spyware? I can't make sense of this.

As far as I can tell it's a bot, which means it scans community.netflix.com, not my computer. There's nothing for us to do, only for the admin of either this site or Ning and that's to block access.

Or is there something else going on that I'm missing?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on May 23, 2009 at 5:20pm: Thanks 2McAbre, that does clarify things a bit - but also leads to more questions (as always)... Hope that's okay.

1) Does anyone know whether Ning is involved or not? Can we just ask them and expect a straight answer or is this something they'd be vewy, vewy quiet about?

2) Does anyone know what the nature of this "spying" is? Is it "merely" a bot collecting info from this site - or are we talking third-party tracking cookies on our machines or something even worse?

3) If it's a bot collecting data, is it possible to use the method described in Guy's link to block it - or does Ning control that sort of access?

4) If it turns out that Ning is in on it and it involves both a bot collecting data and (say) third-party tracking cookies (and perhaps even more), is there anything we can do to reduce the damage? (Say, instruct members on how to not allow third-party cookies on their browsers?)

5) Just how big a deal is this? Is it much ado about nothing? Is it a nuisance that we should just be aware of? Is it something we need to warn everyone about? Is this serious enough that we should consider alternatives to Ning? Or is it so serious that we should leave ASAP?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on May 24, 2009 at 9:30am: Thanks 2McAbre!

I don't mind bots scouring this place so much (it's a public site, after all), but I do mind third-party cookies that are trying to keep track of me elsewhere. I in fact consider it an invasion of my privacy.

Those things are usually installed without my knowledge, expire without my knowledge, collect data to which I am not privy and send it to someone I don't know. Sure the data may not contain "personal identifiers", but the one who makes that claim is the one who secretly collects data about me. It's like a guy sticking a gun to your head and saying "don't worry, it's not loaded". He may be telling you the truth, but do you really trust him?

If I want to share my behavioral data with someone, I'd like to be the one who approves it myself. I don't want to rely on Ning or SiteMeter to "weed out the bad seeds". Especially not when things become even more "remote": Ning signs up with SiteMeter who has signed up with SpecificMEDIA who has signed up with... I have to trust that each company has made a wise decision. I'd much prefer to be the one to make that decision, thankyouverymuch.

But thanks for clarifying the issue!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Spindaddydad on May 24, 2009 at 10:18am: And pretty much every social networking site does this to at least the degree which it is being done here. Most are even more intrusive.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on May 24, 2009 at 10:36am: That's why you don't find me on MySpace and Facebook. I think it's distasteful.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on May 24, 2009 at 9:15am: Hm, it must be my AdBlock settings or something, I don't see any SiteMeter thing anywhere. But nice catch!; ▶ Reply to This