Personal issue with the advert system.

Hobbes

Disabling advert scripting for the moment. While I don't have a problem with the advert knowing what previous pages I looked at in boards.ie, I do have an issue with it sending back URL information on websites I visted outside of boards.ie.

example:

http://fogra.boards.ie/delivery/ajs.php?n=a1e4955c&zoneid=7&source=&exclude=,&r=996978051&loc=http%3A//www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php%3Fp%3D56571426&referer=http%3A//www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dboards.ie+advert+tracking+test%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial%26client%3Dfirefox-a

_blank_

Not good, not good at all.

The WebDev toolbar in firefox is disasbling the adverts for some reason...

pvt.joker

Very worrying. Have disabled them temporarily myself also.

DeepBlue

Maybe I misunderstand the issue but hasn't this always been a problem with browsers and the internet?

marco murphy

Why is that worrying? I'm a n00b

CuLT

No idea what you're talking about.

Marcus.Aurelius

Do you mean you don't like the fact that Google tells Boards.ie it referred you here?

I doubt very much that other sites use that referral thing. And I doubt very much vBulletin stores it if it does.

Doesn't that happen with all search engines anyway?

OR do you mean the ad part in the url?

Sully

CuLT wrote: »

No idea what you're talking about.

I think his issue is that the Boards.ie Advert System (OpenX) is reporting what pages he/she last came from when its outside Boards.ie domain. In this example, the system reported he came from a Google search.

If the above is correct, then its fairly standard. A lot of websites track where you last came from for statistical purposes.

marco murphy

Sully wrote: »

I think his issue is that the Boards.ie Advert System (OpenX) is reporting what pages he/she last came from when its outside Boards.ie domain. In this example, the system reported he came from a Google search.

If the above is correct, then its fairly standard. A lot of websites track where you last came from for statistical purposes.

In other words, boards.ie knows he was looking at porn last night? :pac:

Winters

[php]echo $_SERVER;[/php]

Not too hard to do. If you are really worried disable reffering and use Tor and the like.

seamus

Hobbes wrote: »

Disabling advert scripting for the moment. While I don't have a problem with the advert knowing what previous pages I looked at in boards.ie, I do have an issue with it sending back URL information on websites I visted outside of boards.ie.

You know as well as anyone hobbes that the referrer is sent by the browser, so if you're unhappy with that information being supplied to a website, I'm sure there's a firefox plugin which disables sending the referrer header.

The referrer is most commonly used to compile usage statistics - how people are getting here. Under the privacy policy and the data protection act, boards.ie does not and cannot hold detailed information on what websites you were visiting before you visited boards. Any such information is anonymised before being included in stats.

I would hope.

CuLT

OpenX is the software we use for ad serving. No big secret, you can read the specs if you like. I doubt there's any more information being kept than is kept in our web server logs.

Sully

You can only get the website you came from. I dont know of any method to get a full history list, or previous websites (well, unless you get one of those spyware cookies which could do it I suppose)

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

is there any issue here?

its only if a porn site refers you here that there might be an embarassing issue, and i'm guessing that porn sites won't usually refer people to boards.ie

Sully

Roundtower2 wrote: »

is there any issue here?

its only if a porn site refers you here that there might be an embarassing issue, and i'm guessing that porn sites won't usually refer people to boards.ie

The ad system doesn't directly link your username to the specific statistic. It shows the IP address of the visitor, and where he came from, but its unlikely that the Admins are going to lookup the IP on vBulletin to see what user it actually is. Actually, I cant even remember does OpenX even show the referrer in banner ad statistics.

I am beginning to wonder is this even the problem? Since OpenX only shows the ads here, the referrer is only going to be Boards.ie. Your not clicking the ads on another site. Obviously if Boards.ie uses any form of statistic monitoring then the referrer will be recorded, but its recorded on the large majority of webservers anyway.

Eoin

In fact, there are ways to scan for a specified array of URLs using JavaScript and the history object, so this is probably the least of your concerns.

stevenmu

seamus wrote: »

You know as well as anyone hobbes that the referrer is sent by the browser, so if you're unhappy with that information being supplied to a website, I'm sure there's a firefox plugin which disables sending the referrer header.

I think there is, but it can also be done by putting "about:config" in the address bar and pressing enter. This brings up a page of configuration values, you can search it for 'referrer' and there's a value for sendReferrerHeader (or something like that). By default it is set to 2, changing it to 0 tells firefox not to send any refferers. (I think 1 only send referrers to pages within the same domain, but not sure about that)

Hobbes

seamus wrote: »

You know as well as anyone hobbes that the referrer is sent by the browser, so if you're unhappy with that information being supplied to a website, I'm sure there's a firefox plugin which disables sending the referrer header.

Nope didn't. I am not all seeing, all knowing.

The issue for myself at least isn't that it would be pron or something but that if I was to say point to a boards.ie entry from work, then an internal url is generated. Which work get stroppy about.

Will look into the FF setting and just disable that.

Ta.

Sully

Hobbes wrote: »

The issue for myself at least isn't that it would be pron or something but that if I was to say point to a boards.ie entry from work, then an internal url is generated. Which work get stroppy about.

But, the referrer would only be Boards.ie as the ads are only shown on these pages. So if you click the banner, your coming from Boards.ie so the other website will only know that...

stevenmu

Hobbes wrote: »

The issue for myself at least isn't that it would be pron or something but that if I was to say point to a boards.ie entry from work, then an internal url is generated. Which work get stroppy about.

I think you're talking about having a link to a boards.ie entry from a company intranet or internal page of some sort? In that case yes, the referrer will include the page's internal url. The FF setting will stop that, but only for yourself of course. I'm not 100% sure but I think that by using javascript on the link, a window.location or window.open command for e.g., it will not send the current page as the referrer.


edit:

But, the referrer would only be Boards.ie as the ads are only shown on these pages. So if you click the banner, your coming from Boards.ie so the other website will only know that...

One potential problem is that if Hobbes' internal url ends up in the boards ads statistics, it may then eventually end up published somewhere on the net, at which point it may end up in search engines (and possibly with them attempting to index it as well).

Sully

Unless im missing something, and its very possible, the referer will only record the page you came from. Since the issue is with OpenX, and OpenX is only displaying on Boards.ie pages - the statistics will only record a page on Boards.ie as the referer. The internal URL etc. should not be displayed considering the advert is not on a page on their network.

stevenmu

The url used to request the ad from openx to display on a page includes the referrer to that page. If you look at Hobbes' example in the op the url for the ad at fogra.boards.ie has a referrer parameter containing a url for a google search Hobbes did. Presumably this will be saved by the openx system.

Giblet

Any website that tracks stats will store this information.

Sully

stevenmu wrote: »

The url used to request the ad from openx to display on a page includes the referrer to that page. If you look at Hobbes' example in the op the url for the ad at fogra.boards.ie has a referrer parameter containing a url for a google search Hobbes did. Presumably this will be saved by the openx system.

That was an example. I'm not convinced that a url outside Boards.ie will ever be the referrer in this case - regardless, when you click on an advert it will be on Boards.ie (maybe a different subdomain, but still Boards.ie) the advert will be displayed. Therefore, the referrer will be Boards.ie and not any other website.

Why? Because it was Boards.ie who linked you to the other website.

CuLT

Sully wrote: »

That was an example. I'm not convinced that a url outside Boards.ie will ever be the referrer in this case - regardless, when you click on an advert it will be on Boards.ie (maybe a different subdomain, but still Boards.ie) the advert will be displayed. Therefore, the referrer will be Boards.ie and not any other website.

Why? Because it was Boards.ie who linked you to the other website.

Mmm, I'm pretty sure this is the case.

The recorded referrer in all cases (bar strange scenarios where people link directly to an image stored on the ad server from elsewhere) will be a boards.ie page as the request to the ad server is being made from a boards.ie page, not the intranet/original referrer site.

User clicks link on http://intranet that points to http://www.boards.ie
http://www.boards.ie takes the request, records the referrer (http://intranet), and starts serving the page
http://www.boards.ie requests an advert from http://fogra.boards.ie
http://fogra.boards.ie takes the request, records the referrer (http://www.boards.ie) and serves the advert

The actual referrer usually contains a threadid or forumid which is why the information is useful, as it helps us see what ads are being seen where on the forums.

stevenmu

There is actually an extra step though,

CuLT wrote: »

User clicks link on http://intranet that points to http://www.boards.ie
http://www.boards.ie takes the request, records the referrer (http://intranet), and starts serving the page*
http://www.boards.ie requests an advert from http://fogra.boards.ie
http://fogra.boards.ie takes the request, records the referrer (http://www.boards.ie) and serves the advert

*As part of building the http://www.boards.ie page to serve, the referrer (http://intranet) is incorporated into the url used to request the advert from fogra h ttp://fogra.boards.ie/showanadd.gif?referrer=http://intranet

When the client browser is then displaying the page it uses that url to request the ad image from fogra. At this point the actual referrer is the boards.ie page, however because that page's referrer has been included as a parameter in the fogra url, that too is being passed to fogra.

(I'm not complaining about this btw, I think it's only potentially a problem for a very limited number of cases, this is just how I see what is happening)

jhegarty

I don't there is any web stats program that does not record the referrer in some form or another

Sully

CuLT wrote: »

Mmm, I'm pretty sure this is the case.

Forgive me, but are we in agreement or not agreeing? You seem to be thinking what im thinking, which should not be a concern to the OP unless its step 1.

User clicks link on http://intranet that points to http://www.boards.ie
http://www.boards.ie takes the request, records the referrer (http://intranet), and starts serving the page

This would ever be the only case where intranet will be the referrer.. No? I would have thought it would be, but maybe im missing something.

Hobbes

Thanks for Cult, Sully et al for clarifying it all for me. I no longer have a personal issue with the adverts.

Sully

Hobbes wrote: »

Thanks for Cult, Sully et al for clarifying it all for me. I no longer have a personal issue with the adverts.

No problem. Sorry if I added to any confusion