It now appears that P2PNET was given a rotten deal by a certain usenet provider that once advertised here. This same company is now offering (under a different label) $10/month unlimited SSL usenet through its advertising partner websites, which is nearly the identical service that P2PNET readers would have had to cough up $30/month for.

We should all thank Jon Newton for serving as the cannon fodder in this usenet price war. The never-ending complaints of high prices apparently did get noticed by this advertiser, who recently rolled out huge price cuts on its $10 “limited time” special (which require a special link to access) that even beats the price of a frequently mentioned cutrate competitor. As this is a company which has NEVER cut prices before, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the frequent bashing it got here was probably a factor.

Not to rub salt in the wounds, but if p2pnet had managed to negotiate an exclusive deal on a $10/month special on unlimited usenet, it would not only have been a financial success, but would have eliminated much of the vitriol and ill-will that unfortunately resulted from promoting what many believed to be a grossly over-priced product — and then censoring negative comment.

Sure, I do all that, as well as removing all sorts of stuff from other folders not serviced by the browser. The point was, if you look carefully at everything these sites are putting on your computer, it’s quite obvious they don’t give a sweet fuck about your settings, your privacy, your consent, or even if your computer goes down trying to purge what they’ve done – they’re determined to keep tracking you and sharing what they find with their “affiliates” and building as complete a database on everyone as possible. Some are even using “drive-by installers” to plant rootkits and assorted malware as soon as the first page’s URL resolves.

Seems Google is one of the largest driving forces in this movement (with the exception of the malware usage). Right from the first search page, Google starts planting the cookies. And they’re no longer content to use standard cookies either. They tend to now plant html and Flash cookies in addition to the standard ones, so you end up with at least 3 varieties of tracking cookies – one of them not residing in your browser. In addition, every page you go to with a Google Ad on it tries to grab more info from you and add it to Google’s global database.

Deleting cookies is not enough anymore.
You’d have to keep doing it for every single page you visit.
You now need to tighten the writing permissions to your drive itself and prevent unwanted files from being created outside of your browser.

Yes but since I delete everything in the browser cash including cookies and .SOl files it is not working with me anyway.

You said exactly what I was thinking. Very telling that is.

It would seem that mined data has far more value than the limited revenue they’re getting from the ads, judging by the almost religious diligence they all show both in placing the numerous tracking cookies, and in the limitless, underhanded tactics they’re willing to resort to in circumventing users’ settings and security in order to keep them placed.

Really, when you get down to it, privacy considerations aside, in practical terms, how valuable is that information, I wonder?

Cheers!

Most sites that have them also have a “partnership” or “affiliate” clause, buried in their user policies, that basically says they reserve the right to allow all the 3rd party advertisers to place tracking cookies on your computer, thus allowing them to follow you around while you’re surfing, regardless of whether you click on an ad or not.