Is Mailcity Collecting User Data thru HTTP/HTTPS? 7
L.Conover asks: "I figured this would be a question best hashed out by Slashdotters - I frequently use www.Mailcity.com, a free e-mail portal sponsored by Lycos. Now, each time I receive an e-mail containing a link, an automated script inserts the string 'http://proxy-mail.mailcity.lycos.com/bin/redirector2.cgi' into the link. The only reason I can think of for forcing people to use a proxy server is to collect data on where people are linking to from Mailcity. I've e-mailed their customer support folk to find out how that data collection is being used, but gotten no reply. Lycos doesn't mention any such data collection in its privacy policy, and there's no way to 'opt out' of their proxy server intrusion without cutting and pasting URLs manually. (Which I often do, because I often receive 'secure' URLs in email that include autologins.) Lycos has a partnership with DoubleClick, so I find this data collection to be more than a little shady. Anyone care to shed some light on this - and do other 'free' e-mail portals indulge in similar proxy-practices with e-mailed URLs?"
Maybe user protection mesure (Score:1)
But they could be very well logging them as well out of pure curiosity.
Why? (Score:1)
hotmail does (Score:1)
opens a frame with a now outside hotmail and the actual page.
Lycos Tracks You Across Network With Personal Data (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Net@ddress does this as well (Score:3)
When viewing message from the web site (not downloaded via POP) all URL's are prefixed with:
http://www.netaddress.com/tpl/Info/Popup?hidden_ __url=http://
when you click on one of these links, it opens a new window titled "Info Popup" that contains two frames. The top frame contains the text:
Since this does not happen when you use POP access, I don't think it is a data-gathering practice. Maybe they think people are not smart enough to tell when they have left the Net@ddress site.
the reason (Score:3)
1. To open up a new window, so that you can tell you're not on the mailcity site still. Sort of a safeguard against anyone thinking they're looking at something on the mailcity site that isn't really on it.
2. To obscure the referring url when you go to the new site, so noone can log into the webmail system by knowing the session ID you were using (although that obviously shouldn't be an issue with a well-coded webmail app, but you know..)