Competitions Discussion Thread Part 12

divadee

This is a continuation of the old thread here.

The old thread was getting very long and very messy so a nice new shiny thread for you lot to mess up!!!!

Please post any questions, tips and discussions about anything comp releated in this thread.

Barnabysue

ooooh shiny TY Divadee

purplecatlover

thanks diva

twinkUK

A little tip for any comps where you need to identify a picture, which also works most of the time from just part of a picture like you often get in the big Q Magazine quizzes or the Epiphone guitar comp currently on Planet Rock

www dot tineye dot com (sorry can't post links yet I don't think) is a reverse search engine for images - copy the picture's URL into the search box and it will find other places on the web that the picture appears, often allowing you to identify who or what it is, even from only part of the image

Doesn't always work but has helped me out lots of times before when I've been a bit stumped :cool:

Thanks to One-Eye for suggesting on the guitar comp thread that I post the tip over here!

Marg2k8

Thanks Divadee for setting up this new thread and thanks twinkUK for your tip. Here is a link:-

http://www.tineye.com/

furndire

Nice link TwinkUK

Amilucky?

Most of this info was posted in the inn this morning however most will have missed the post as it has been moved to GAME OVER so I have decided to post it again here

To everyone who has concerns about Skimlinks maybe you should also have concerns about an old friend of ours Google Analytics

Google Analytics has in my opinion vast privacy concerns

I first found this site which displays Competitions Time group user activity
http://boardreader.com/fp/www_moneys...me_597926.html

and was then amazed to find this site which tracks every MSE's users activity
http://www.boardtracker.com/profile/3706/493519

information is being relayed via MSE to Google Analytics who then make the information openly available to numerous sites

the number at the end of the link is your member profile no/id the site displays user activity on a daily,weekly and monthly basis and shows it on a graph

the free version doesn't display much but quite worryingly there is a premium version which promises the following

Member Ego Network gives an insight into members' social activity and network, helping you understand who they interact with, how much and in what nature. Do they lead discussions or led by others? isolated, or have many friends? follow or lead within their own personal network? How much do their friends post and do they also communicate between themselves? Who are the dominant players in the network? and much more... Is this member an Opidion Leader? Greeter? Answer person? Question person? Initiator? Drive-by shooter? Networker? Maybe a spammer?

AuthorLines gives an insight into members posting activity over the past year, helping you understand who a member is? Do they post mainly in their own threads or in other people's? heavily discuss matters or post once and move on? post in many discussions or just few? post more now than in the past or have they left the board recently? Move beyond just understanding the post to fully understanding who is behind it... Together with Member Ego Network, you can quickly understand who members REALLY are!

from Wikipedia

Google Analytics is implemented by including what is known as a "page tag". This is referred to as the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) and is a hidden snippet of JavaScript code that the user adds onto every page of his or her website. This code acts as a beacon, collecting private visitor data and sending it back to Google data collection servers for processing

Users can officially add up to 50 site profiles. Each profile generally corresponds to one website.

Privacy Issues

Google Analytics, due to its ubiquity, raises many privacy concerns. Whenever someone visits a website that uses Google Analytics, Google tracks that visit via the user's IP address. Because so many websites use Google Analytics, Google is able to track visitors across websites, theoretically giving Google a real-time view of the traffic on much of the web. In addition, since Google also has personally identifiable information for more individuals than any other statistics service, there is a significant potential for abuse

I feel that everyone has a right as to what is downloaded and disclosed by there computer and they also have the right to block content which they do not like

if like me you feel the same and you are using Firefox download the add-on Add Block Plus and in preferences add the following filter rules

Skimlinks
||skimlinks.com^$third-party
http://moneysavingexpertcom.skimlinks.com/api/vb.mse.js
/skimlinks.js
/skimlinks/vb.js

Google Analytics
|http://www.google-analytics.com/*

furndire

Amilucky should the boxes be ticked on the adblock plus box?

Amilucky?

furndire wrote: »

Amilucky should the boxes be ticked on the adblock plus box?

if you mean in the preferences box then yes also enable Adblock plus should also be ticked (click on the red ABP to see what is being blocked per page)

you may also wish to subscribe to Easylist and Fanboy's List to avoid other third party nasties
http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions

Best of Luck

Rainey_LB

Would this have anything to do with a spyware cookie being picked up by my antivirus everytime I use MSE?

Amilucky?

Rainey_LB wrote: »

Would this have anything to do with a spyware cookie being picked up by my antivirus everytime I use MSE?

I rather much doubt it!