Previous message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02446.html Latest Gator privacy statement: http://www.gator.com/help/privacy_license-2.6.html Below message forwarded with Ian's permission. I invite Gator representatives (copied above) to reply. -Declan ******** From: Ian Hiebert <ihiebertat_private> To: "'sginsburgat_private'" <sginsburgat_private> Cc: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private> Subject: RE: Gator Sues Interactive Advertising Bureau -- IAB -- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:22:30 -0700 Just in case anyone is interested, we have had serious issues with the Gator software on our networks and have banned it's use completely & blocked all of Gator's servers & websites! We found that in addition to having a vague declaration in the EULA of what the Gator software actually does, ( most of our users were quite surprised when they were told ) we found when monitoring our network traffic that the gator software continually sends data from the users PC to their servers ( and to 3rd party servers not owned by Gator.com )even when they weren't browsing the web. When we contacted Gator about this we asked to speak to an engineer but instead were contacted by someone in their PR dept. who simply quoted the information contained in the EULA. Not satisfied with that, we continued testing & discovered through packet capture & decoding that the software searches & sends not only Gator cookies, but other companies cookies to their servers as well. We then contacted about this, and have not received a response to date ! We realize there are other companies doing this, but none have been as vocal in denying their software's underhanded activity as Gator.com has been. We will continue to block Gator.com & its associated servers, and their advertisers, and any other web tricks they come up on all our corporate networks, & urge others to do the same until Gator.com & others like it get the message. - "If they want to use our networks for advertising & market research, they need to get our permission first & they need to start compensating us for it !" Thank you - Ian Hiebert IT Manager British Motor Car Distributors, LTD. Qvale Automotive Group ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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