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That weird tracking info link thingy...

Grey Area

16:25 / 02.10.04

Like the summary says, why does that little link button float around the site? Sometimes it's on the front page, sometimes within a thread, sometimes, like today, it shows up in the response-writing area. I'm sure this isn't a big problem, but I'm still curious as to how and why this happens.

Apparently we've had 2 unique visitors from the Antartic. I find this very cool indeed. I have a mental image of two snow-encrusted explorers surfing the web on their Toughbooks in a geodesic dome adorned with icicles.

Spatula Clarke

21:38 / 02.10.04

I've never seen it, GA.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:41 / 02.10.04

Nor I. Which browser are you using, GA?

(On Antartica - one of them is the Thing)

Bed Head

22:23 / 02.10.04

I’ve never seen it either, but I think Money $hot found the same thing a while ago, even started his own thread about it, permanent link and all.

I was going to ask at the time whether us oiks should really have access to site stats like this; whether there’s any information in that link that could go towards compromising either the site or member information. But then, I haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about here, so I just left it, figuring there’s always at least one of you clever, technically-minded chaps who knows exactly what’s going on. (*waves in the general direction of Dupre and Grey and Haus*)

Hm. Besides which, apparently we’ve only had 177 unique visits from US military. If this gets out, any lingering reputation Barbelith might have as a seething nest of fearsome counter-culturalists is *over*. Heck, I bet even disinfo gets more than that.

w1rebaby

03:34 / 03.10.04

Er, hello, I know about these things, you know.

IP addresses are available though not directly corresponding to usernames and posts. If a company were to wish to check IPs and times vs their own net records, they would be able to find out that someone had been posting on Barbelith at a certain time... having said that, they'd be able to tell that they'd been posting somewhere anyway without those records.

It's the tying of IPs to usernames that is most significant and that is not taking place on that page. I don't consider the availability of said figures much of a security leak.

It is rather depressing that 82.7% of Barbelith accesses are from MSIE 5 or 6 though.

Grey Area

10:20 / 04.10.04

It's usually in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. I use Opera 7.(something)...and the link button seems to be hosted on the tracking info site, because it's broken and all I see is Opera's "there's meant to be an image here" box (not a red X but a recessed outline with 'image' written in it).

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