IE9 question

I am using IE9 on a Vista machine.

There is something going on that was first a bother and is now a worry. I
went to a business-card printing site to check their pricing and within a
couple of hours every website I open has business card printing
advertisments on it. I went to a security camera site to check their
pricing and within a couple of hours every page I open has security camera
advertisments on it. It was a bother, now it's a worry.

What the hell is going on? Is there a way I can stop it? I was thinking
about checking the prices of a particular model of car and I have resisted
for a couple of days just, at least, until someone tells me what or if there
is anything I can do about this.

Thanks in advance for all help.

 

If you allow cookies/script then you essentially have
a tracking collar. Companies like Google/Doubleclick
are tracking you around the Web. If you have a Microsoft
LiveID they can track you around the Web. If you have
any toolbars installed in IE, those can track you around
the Web. Using the Address Bar as search is a sneaky
way to track you around the Web. Allowing IE or Firefox
to "warn you about risky sites" is just another trick to
track you around the Web.

Most websites are getting ads from large ad servers.
Google/Doubleclick is on just about any site that has
ads. That means they can use the ads as web beacons
to track you around the Web. They make a big noise
about how the data is "anonymized", but the simple fact
is that they're spying on you alomst wherever you go online.
To respect your privacy means to hurt their own business.

This is nothing new. If you use a cellphone you're also
being followed around physically. Advertising companies
are salivating over the possibilities of showing you
targetted ads on a constant basis, so that researching
cars online might get you ads for auto insurance, for instance,
for instance, while texting a friend about pizza might get
you a spam coupon on your cellphone for 20% off Alka Seltzer
at the drugstore you're currently walking past.

You may just be seeing a change in behavior on the part
of ad companies. They've been wary of scaring people off
by letting them know just how much they're being spied on,
so they're proceeding cautiously.

There's no simple answer. If you don't want to be tracked
online you need to block 3rd-party ads, script and cookies.
Most people don't want to do that because it interferes
with shopping and social network sites. That's your choice.

If you want to mitigate the intrusion, one simple improvement
is to use a HOSTS file and block Google/Doubleclick ad URLs and
Google Analytics. That will eliminate most ads and thereby most
tracking. (Some people might say it's wrong to block ads. But
using a HOSTS file doesn't block ads. It only blocks files from
websites that you never willingly agreed to visit in the first place.)
Mozilla browsers also have a semi-hidden setting to block all
3rd-party files, but Mozilla is funded mainly by Google, so they've
removed that option from the Firefox settings and made a notable
effort to confuse anyone who wants to use it via about:config.

See here for more info:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/cook.php5

Note that on Vista/7 you need to log on as Admin and give
yourself permission to edit the HOSTS file.

Beyond that, don't use IE and don't enable any "helpful"
browser features in any browser. (Firefox's functionality
to warn you about "attack sites" sends each visited URL
to Google.) The reasons to avoid IE are complex and numerous.
It's partly because IE is deeply linked into the system and
is designed to be controlled by others. (It's made to allow
corporate system admins to control employee behavior.)
Another reason is that IE settings are *extremely*
convoluted. Just controlling script settings turns into a
hobby, while the noScript add-on for firefox allows fairly
easy control over script.

--
--
|I am using IE9 on a Vista machine.
|
| There is something going on that was first a bother and is now a worry.
I
| went to a business-card printing site to check their pricing and within a
| couple of hours every website I open has business card printing
| advertisments on it. I went to a security camera site to check their
| pricing and within a couple of hours every page I open has security camera
| advertisments on it. It was a bother, now it's a worry.
|
| What the hell is going on? Is there a way I can stop it? I was thinking
| about checking the prices of a particular model of car and I have resisted
| for a couple of days just, at least, until someone tells me what or if
there
| is anything I can do about this.
|
| Thanks in advance for all help.
| --
| Tony Vella
| Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| http://www.amedialuz.ca
|

 

On IE9 you can go to Safety > Tracking Protection > Get a Tracking
Protection list online. I use Easylist - when I (seldom) us IE.
There are very few ads.

 

A web page isn't going to have ads in it unless THEY put them in their
web page. So obviously not ALL web pages are going to have ads and so
they won't have those for security cameras or card printing. If you see
ads for a site that doesn't itself have any then you are viewing the web
pages inside a frame with another frame used to present the ads from
another domain. As an example of using frames to show content from
different domains, go to http://translate.google.com/ and enter
http://www.srware.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=17 and hit Enter. The top
frame is Google and the bottom is the SRWare forum in German. Frames
can be anywhere in the web page and may not have a border.

So what happens when you exit ALL instances of IE9 and reload it? Exit
IE9 and use the Processes tab in Task Manager to make sure there are no
remnant instances of iexplore.exe. If there are, kill them (could be
you visited a site that loaded a windowless instance of IE).

If you still see the ads on web pages that don't themselves have them,
you have been infected (voluntarily or covertly). Maybe you installed a
toolbar. Maybe a popup said you needed to install a new version of
Flash, a codec, or something else and you chose to comply and install
whatever software they foisted onto your host. Have you tried loading
IE in its no add-ons mode (after first making sure to exit all instances
of it)?

 

Thank you very much for your response. No, I have not tried but I shall
certainly try right now.

Since my original post I have tried [tools > inprivate browsing > whatever
webpage] and I have not had any ads. I have also changed the third-party
cookies to 'block' and the first-party cookies to 'advise'. What I must
remember now is to do the [tools > inprivate browsing] thing every time I
open IE before doing anything else. Wish I could do it automatically
because I can't rely on my memory very much any more.

Thanks again.

 

Copy the following 3 lines and paste them into a text document (Notepad or
equivalent). Save it as InPrivateOn.REG. Right-click on it and pick Merge.
InPrivate browsing will start automatically each time IE9 is started.
********start copy**********

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Safety\PrivacIE]

"StartMode"=dword:00000001

********end copy***********



Use the following lines to undo it, saved as InPrivateOff.REG:
********start copy**********

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Safety\PrivacIE]

"StartMode"=dword:00000000

********end copy***********

I did this for both IE9 on Win7HP and IE8 on WinXP and it works.
--
SC Tom

 

| On IE9 you can go to Safety > Tracking Protection > Get a Tracking
| Protection list online. I use Easylist - when I (seldom) us IE.
| There are very few ads.
| --

You may already know this, but there's a problem
with using multiple lists that can cancel each other out:

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2011/03/ie-9s-anti-tracking-feature-flawed-study-finds-247480/

I found the content of EasyList here:

http://easylist-msie.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.tpl

It contains quite a bit, but they seem to be trying to
avoid stepping on anyone's toes at the same time.
Neither doubleclick.net nor google/google-analytics
is fully blocked, for instance.

In my HOSTS file I have:

pagead2.googlesyndication.com
imageads.googleadservices.com
www.google-analytics.com
www.googleadservices.com

Easylist has specific Google files and oddball
Google domains blocked:

/google-analyticator/
- /google-analytics-for-wordpress/
- /googleanalytics.swf
- /googleanalyticsmanagement.swf

Interesting. My small HOSTS file is blocking
far more than that giant list blocks. I'm afraid
that no one organization can be trusted with
this stuff. Every company of any size has a
vested interest in not helping people to avoid
ads or tracking. And they seem to want to pretend
that an ad is not a tracking device.

 

That's interesting. However I was just making a point that tracking
protection is built-in to IE9 and doesn't need a high degree of nerdity to
use.
I am aware of the dangers of multiple lists.