Tracking?

McCuddly

Hi

I've noticed on my computer, (It has a resident shield provided by AVG) it states when I use this site there are Ad cookies being placed on my machine and tracking cookies, The common two on this site are

Serving-sys
Atdmt

Before any user says its my machine, its been scanned and nothing has been found. Everytime I go on this site my resident shield goes mad.

Are you tracking us? and why are there so many ad cookies appearing from this site if its "free from ads"

fermi

I don't get either of those browsing here, even using a browser that is set to accept all cookies etc and no internet security interfering that might block them.

A quick search seems to suggest that at least one of those is often symtematic of some spy/malware being on your machine? You may well have scanned your computer, but not everything will always be picked up, even with apparently up to date virus/spy/malware protection.

So maybe ask on the Techie Stuff board to see if there is anything you can do to double/triple check that you haven't had anything sneak onto your machine?

I think Atdmt at least may be a cookie that is placed initially by some software installed on your machine rather than a site?

The few times I've had AVG on a machine, I honestly wasn't impressed by the resident/internet shield or whatever it has now. Waaaaaay too many false positives.

The other possibility is that the cookies are being placed unintentionally? Could be by a image/link in a forum post or article that 'drops' a tracking cookie?

We've had people doing that posting on the forums to hijack affiliate revenue from legitimate well known sites.

Explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing

I've seen posts with hidden links/images that drop external cookies just as described in that, so I know it happens on and off here.

McCuddly

As I've said, I've scanned and got no malware. It only goes mad on this site!

fermi

McCuddly wrote: »

As I've said, I've scanned and got no malware. It only goes mad on this site!

Scanned with what?

As said, I do not get those cookies by visiting this site.

Can you point us to a particular page that drops those cookies?

McCuddly

Any forum page.

I scanned with Malware bytes and Spybot and nothing, As this is my uni laptop, I got one of the techs up there to have a look, Nothing.

I tried on my partners laptop (work issused, never used on the internet) and his Resident shield, (Different protection software) went mad aswell.

fermi

Well, I don't get those cookies from any forum page that I can find?

These are all I get, and they are all known about and innocuous.

david39

MSE will place a cookie on your computer if you click "Remember Me" at log-in - that's the way it remembers you.

Any site on which you ask to be remembered will place a cookie.

Also - if you ask for a quote from an insurance company or a holiday booking company, they will record your details in a cookie which they place on your computer and to which they can refer next time you revisit them. They don't keep the details on their own computer system.

Very few of them are malicious - and you can clear them all out in seconds by using Ccleaner ( www.ccleaner.com ) - You can also opt to retain the good cookies, like the MSE Remember Me one, while ditching the rest.

fermi

I think you may get the odd YouTube cookie from an embedded video, Facebook ones from some widgets, and other similar ones. Same as virtually any site.

fermi

OK. Posting this and browsing the forum using.....

- Win XP (just a VM I'm afraid)
- IE 8
- AVG 2011 Internet Security, with all protection modules active.

Not a peep or warning from AVG at all....

Nor a sign of those cookies in the cache.