To allow content providers to track channel usage

Web site authors and developers commonly track how often people visit their Web pages. Perhaps you've seen the little counters that say something like "you are the 2000th visitor to this Web page."

Counting how many people visit a Web page allows the Web site author to gauge how popular the Web site is. Counting how many people visit daily over a period of time may indicate whether there is growing or declining interest.

Content providers for channels are interested in which content interests people most, so that they can tailor future content to meet those needs. However, when you download content from a channel and view it later offline, the content provider has no way of knowing which pages you visited and which you didn't. You can specify that a log be kept of which content you viewed, so that the next time you connect to the Internet, that information is automatically sent back to the content provider.

This information does not associate any personal information with what you viewed, it just indicates which information was viewed. Without this information, the content provider may not be able to gauge what type of information is useful or popular.

You can choose whether to allow this information to be recorded and sent to the content provider:

1. On the View menu, click Options.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. Under Browsing, select the Enable channel logging check box. If you do not want to record and send this information, make sure this check box is clear.