Cookies and Web Bugs

Because recognizing a specific user based on the IP address alone is neither easy nor certain enough to employ for all internet users, additional mechanisms (for example so-called "cookies") are used.

Cookies make it possible to repeatedly identify a given web browser when a website is visited more than once, regardless of the user's IP address. Web servers use these mechanisms for purposes such as providing a personalized interface to the user.

On the other hand, web rings, among others, use the cookie mechanism to create a comprehensive profile of web surfers. They use a technique to follow the movements of the user over various different websites:
A certain advertisement banner, picture, or so-called "web bug" is placed on each website that takes part in the tracking. The web browser loads these objects from a central server of the web ring so that the user is recognizable by cookies, even though he never visited the web ring server.

A "web bug" is a small picture, usually 1x1 pixels, in the same color as the background of the website. That way, the user almost certainly won't recognize that objects from foreign servers are being loaded.

JonDo does not currently filter Cookies! That means that if you really want to anonymously surf the internet, you should: