BeePee, you ARE scaremongering! I have stated in other threads about this that the cookies that PPRuNe sets are for the control of the bulletin board and the way it interacts with your computer. Have any of the ‘screamers’ figured out how every time you log on to the PPRuNe forums it knows when wa you were logged on and how to let you know which forums should show a light to let you know there are new threads since you were last logged on or which folders to show as red?
Just about every website now uses cookies to provide the interactivity with your browsers. I have yet to see any cookie that gets your email address and personal details or uploads any software to your computer. What utter rubbish! Yes anyone can find out what browser, what operating system and which version you are using as well as which ISP you are logged on through. You don’t need a cookie to do that but they do help in getting that information.
I know that the advertisers use cookies. Yes, they can find out sometimes if the same person is receiving the same advert IF the modem they are connected through in the exchange is the same one they connected through last time. Yes, advertisers can possibly create a profile of what you like if you click on some adverts and in future the systems may be able to recognise you when an advert is being delivered to your computer and so send an advert that is more likely to be of interest to you. SO WHAT? I would rather see adverts that were of interest to me than adverts for something that isn’t! Big deal!
Do you ever stop to think what newspapers or magazines would look like if there was no advertising in them or what they would actually cost to buy? I need advertising to pay for the running of this site. Without it there wouldn’t be a PPRuNe. It would have bogged down and died years ago if I wasn’t generating revenue from advertisers to pay for upgrading the server and the software. Next week the whole site is having to move to a new dedicated server with dual processors, barely six months after upgrading to the first dedicated server because the loads are getting unmanageable.
Thanks to the adfreestats I know how many readers and from what part of the world and what time they log on and I can use that information to attract new advertisers so I can pay for the next upgrade which will be due soon. PPRuNe currently has nearly 30,000 registered users but I know through the stats that I get more than that number of readers every day! Unique readers! You only have to see the ‘InLive’ window at the top of every page to see how many people are one at any one instant. The system uses cookies for that information. That information is needed to help manage the site and plan for the future!
As for the utter ‘bovine excrement’ that any cookies are digging out your email addresses and sending them to spammers, you have got to be kidding! One of the main reasons that I have banned hotmail is because of plonkers who use it solely to register for PPRuNe but start to receive spam thinking I have given their address out but they fail to realise that hotmail is just about the most heavily hacked mail server in the world and anyone with a hotmail address is most likely to have their email address doing the rounds of spammers. Hell, some spammers have programs that just generate names and append them to ‘@hotmail.com’ and blast out their crap. Nothing to do with PPRuNe. BEagle, you can take your ‘shock horror’ attitude because as I have mentioned in the announcement about banning hotmail that yahoo and possibly excite are about to be blocked too for exactly the same reasons.
As for your computer auto logging on... well... read the manual! If you set your dial-up software to autodial in every time an application that looks for the internet wakes up then that is what will happen! Your computer will dial up! If you leave a PPRuNe page up and your dial in software is set to automatiacally log in then that’s what will happen. The banner adverts at the top of pprune pages are set to refresh every three minutes and so your computer dials in. Either set your dial in software to only dial in when you tell it or close the PPRuNe pages after you log off. Nothing sinister. No conspiracy.
Save your ‘OUTRAGE’ for something else! I am getting fed up with all the panic, screaming, conspiracy theorists who post the kind of crap that is in this thread every few weeks. PPRuNe is a huge website now, generating over 10 million page views a month. Thats over 140Gb of bandwidth a month! I spend almost all my spare time together with a few friends to run this website. It is not a big business or company with offices and loads of staff. I and my friends do this for no financial gain, from our homes in our spare time and every few weeks or so I get someone screaming about conspiracy and cookies and all sorts of other crap.
Well, I have had enough. If you don’t like it you have a few choices. Don’t visit at all, turn cookies off and lose some of the functionality of the forums, set your browser to warn you before a cookie is set and you choose which ones to accept (the option I use) or just get on with it and stop worrying! I have repeated since I first set PPRuNe up in 1995 that I wouldn’t charge users for access. It wouldn’t work. I know that raising the money to pay for the chat program has been difficult and that was a pittance compared to what it costs to run the site. It is the number and variety of readers and contributors that makes PPRuNe what it is and I am not about to dilute that because in my experience as soon as money is asked for only about 1% of people actually fork out in the end.
If any of the panickers out there think that I sell their details to spammers I would have nearly 30,000 angry people on my back. Don’t be so stupid! PPRuNe has established its integrity over the last 6 years and anyone whith an inckling of common sense who has been using PPRuNe for any length of time knows this.
Angry? You bet I am.
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Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
[This message has been edited by Capt PPRuNe (edited 29 March 2001).]