Security → Spotify, Spokeo, AOL, Others Sued Over Web Tracking

"Website analytics firm KISSmetrics and more than 20 of its customers, including Spotify, AOL’s About.me, Slideshare.net, Spokeo and the news site Gigaom.com were sued Monday on the grounds that KISSmetrics’ tracking technology violated federal and state privacy laws.

The suit (.pdf), filed in a federal court in Northern California, is seeking class-action status and unspecified damages.

At issue are methods KISSmetrics used — first reported by Wired.com — to track users who have deleted their cookies. The company juggled a variety of other technologies including Flash, Silverlight, HTML5 and so-called ETags in cached browser files to place and read unique identifiers." »www.wired.com/epicenter/ ··· My+Yahoo

The complete write-up:
Spotify, Spokeo, AOL, Others Sued Over Web Tracking

When there's a lawyer, & possible money to be made, there's a way.

(But then, when did "possible" ever enter into the equation?)

Excellent!!!!

People need to wake up AND TAKE THIER PRIVACY BACK!!

This is GOOD news!

I know Flushflash removes flash cookies. I wonder how we can remove the other identifiers that could have been placed on our computers...

Sincerely, Libra

That's the link already inidicated in my original post. I agree. At the very least this will cause transparency. There is far too much complacency going around, even on this forum, that because technology makes things doable, that this is a good thing or that it should be permitted. At some point, nothing will be private since everything can be monitored and ultimately controlled.

Don't allow any sort of cache (memory, disk, Flash, etc) on your browser if you want to keep Etags off. At the very least, clear all cache (all kinds) EACH TIME before you go to a site that sets Etags.

It's too bad that there is no way to automatically do this each time the browser is shut down (or else I don't know of one). So each new session would start anew.

With FF 3.6.18 you can clear cache through Tools -> Clear Recent History -> Cache, but you have to remember to manually do it. Does anyone know if in the Tools -> Options -> Network -> Offline Storage tab if you set the cache to 0MB would this accomplish the same thing?

Is there any setting in Flash that would automatically clear the cache at each session?

what about trying some "about:config" settings for a more permanent solution.

Many are using Spotify regardless of these security breaches

SeaMonkey 2.2 (& therefore I suppose FF 5) can "clear my private data when I close SeaMonkey" - which can include cookies, which would also clear Flash cookies.

Would expect that there is an extension to do similar for FF 3.6?

I remember that 3.6 can clear cache, history, etc when you close firefox, no extension required. However, I can't remember where the setting is.

Question: Would blocking KISSmetrics servers from my gateway keep the tracking fom occurring or does their tracking work differently (like a script hosted on the website's server instead of from KISSmetrics for example)?

There has been updates to the Link I posted further up the thread. I would think as long as the suit is ongoing, all illegal actions would presumably have halted at least for know.

Nasty business