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Neil Stevens- I need your help

By: Scope (Diary)  |  July 10th, 2010 at 06:32 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I am posting this as a diary, because I don’t want my concern to fall by the wayside in a comment.

I use Mozilla Firefox.  I just connected to the internet via my provider, and, got a message that I needed to update my “advertising” opt out, which I did through Firefox.  For the first time, I got a message that I needed to opt into Taco 3.0 in order to block these 4 sites, I guess that is what you would call them.  It listed-

Sphere

Google Analytics

SiteMeter

Clicky

I closed out, and did not opt in.  Another page came up when I clicked on Redstate that said-

There are privacy concerns at Redstate.  Redstate has 4 tracking sites in use, the ones I listed above.

Then there was a message-

No logins or passwords yet:what personal information they store is unknown.  You IP address is ———, and they know you’re close to Lewisbury, PA using Firefox on WinXP.  Then there is a box to click for “Block 3rd party tracking of Cookies.  There was alot more further down from that,  but I was not able to page down from there.  What the heck is going on?  Am I the only one to get that message.  I use Avast for Virus prevention, and it has been very problamatic lately.

I know I am probably paranoid lately with the moves from the FCC, but is there some reason that Mozilla Firefox is putting that message out?

COMMENTS

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  • Scope

    I got the same message that popped up that there are privacy concerns with Redstate.

  • StandardCandle

    Third party cookies are cookies that do not fall under the authority of the Redstate.com domain. Websites like Redstate use third party applets/scripts in order to track information on their website beyond regular site statistics.

    Each of the site listed above are likely involved with the advertising/site traffic clicking/monitoring that Neil has embedded into the site.

    By blocking these cookies, you’re preventing the advertisers, and Neil from tracking your clicks on Redstate’s site. You’ll likely continue to get the message everytime a page refreshes…

    The session is updated everytime you click/refresh the page, which requires the cookies to be updated. The Redstate cookie, as well as these 3rd party cookies…

    Welcome to the world of internet data mining for advertisers… It’s how they know you’ll click on that STUPID picture… cause you just gotta find out what the heck they’re talking about…

    • Scope

      As I said, I am getting paranoid with the O admin, the FCC and everything else about this government.

      • eastbaylarry

        you also want a spyware program.
        I like Spybot – Search and Destroy
        Free at http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html with donations accepted.

        • mom2oneson
  • Bill S

    Google analytics, Clicky, and Sitemeter. Not sure about Sphere…but I suspect it is as well. We track hits and clicks, Most commercial sites do. Redstate is not a nonprofit. It is owned by Eagle Publishing and attempts to make money. It is important to track traffic trends.

    If you are nervous, read the About and Privacy links for reassurance

    The ads come from an external ad server service. On rare occasion, one of those ads winds up being problematic. Send a note to the Contact link if you have problems.

    There are not “privacy issues”. The fact that your approximate location can be determined has nothing to do with Redstate…it is how ISPs are assigned addresses. Any site can look at your address and take a guess as to your location.

  • Bill S

    I meant “Legal”, not “Privacy”

    http://www.redstate.com/legal/

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    I seem to have missed this diary before.

    Yes, Get Clicky, Google Analytics, and Sitemeter we use for traffic analysis, since none of them are 100% accurate. Erick has several site son there to help give us a bigger picture.

    SphereIt is not a tracker. It’s something we put on the site to help people share Redstate posts and to find related stuff.

    All of these sites have privacy policies I’m sure. If you have concerns I suggest you either use an adblocker to block them, or to go to their sites and find out more.