i'm getting bugged driving up and down this same old strip....
BUGNOSIS: The Privacy Foundation, a Denver nonprofit dedicated to research and education about technological threats to personal privacy, last week released a tool designed to alert users when online sites they're visiting contain "Web bugs," those invisible pseudo-graphics some marketers sometimes use to monitor consumer habits online and in some cases even to steal personal information from your hard drive.
Called Bugnosis, the software currently works only with Internet Explorer on Windows, not with other platforms or browsers. It doesn't work with Web bugs embedded in e-mail either, though the foundation says it's working on a version for Outlook and Outlook Explorer on Windows.
The software doesn't block Web bugs -- it just checks through the HTML code of every page you view, and when it finds a possible Web bug, it optionally alerts you with a sound ("uh-oh!"), makes the hidden bug visible (with your choice among several small but eye-catching icons), and gives you some details about it. In some cases Bugnosis also allows you to send an e-mail to the party that placed the Web bug.
The program, along with some well-written information about the problem it addresses, is available free at www.bugnosis.org. Its parent organization's site is at www.privacyfoundation.org.
[excerpted from henry norr's tech21 column in the 6/11/01 san francisco chronicle]
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