Piracy advocates claim that the use of sophisticated Web bug tracking devices "has grown dramatically" over the past year. More than 30 per cent of Web pages sampled during last year's Christmas season contained new generations of Web bugs that the advertising industry is using to secretly track online surfers, said Richard Smith, CTO at the University of Denver's Privacy Foundation. He used a search engine and identified four million Web bugs planted by 30 vendors. Smith said he has found that bugs are planted by the Boston bank he uses for online banking, and on a hotel site offering Internet room-booking services. He said many companies aren't disclosing their use of bugs in their privacy policies, and at least one Web bug version he uncovered searches a user's computer while they are looking at the site.
News: Privacy
