I resolve to write one entry in this journal every day, even if it’s total crap. At least I have persisted in keeping it going for three years now; that’s a start. Chastisements are finished. Now, on to business:
Reading Mark Pilgrim’s site lead me to an explanation and a demo on how to use CSS and DOM to serve as web beacons.The method allows the server to retrive the browser’s history.
Of course it’s not really CSS itself that is to blame here; it’s the javascript. If you turn javascript off, this isn’t a problem. The sad thing is that many jugheaded or, perhaps more accurately, wiley site designers require javascript to be turned on for their sites to even function. And now that I think about it, you could use server-side scripting to make this invasion of privacy work too. sigh. Oh well. Remember to flush your history cache often, if you have anything you want to hide.
Either that or get a proxy server that blocks web beacons and hook your browser through it.