12th July 2000
Coming from the "Don't Click Here" department, Lockergnomaniac Steven Groginsky shares a stealthy secret. Are you being tracked and traced as you read this? Privacy issues are not to be taken lightly. My personal take on the whole situation: protect yourself from harm as you see fit, but as long as you're online, you'll be vulnerable. When you click on a link, the destination's server records that as a unique impression. It knows how you got there, too. Well, sometimes. If you don't want anybody to know how you got from point A to point B, simply mail the shortcut (URL) to yourself. When you click on it from your e-mail client, the Web server's logs will record: "No Referrer." You can also launch a link from a local page or Run command line and achieve the same results. Gnomies have the power to crash servers, but the world doesn't know that because of this little loophole.