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Grex > Coop9 > #70: Web Page Statistics should be made public | |
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| Author |
Message |
sumitg
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Web Page Statistics should be made public
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Mar 12 09:43 UTC 1997 |
Hi
I had written to the web masters of grex asking them to make
the http logs for the web page statistics public so that a
user of grex can check from which sites his/her page is
being accessed.
They feel that it would be an evasion of privacy but I don't
see how that can be so. I don't see how users of grex being
able to examine where my web page has been accessed and how
many times, can in anyway invade my privacy.
Please do make /var/log/http* public to all users of grex.
Sumit
(sumitg@grex)
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| 23 responses total. |
remmers
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response 1 of 23:
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Mar 12 13:49 UTC 1997 |
The point isn't that invades your privacy. Rather, I see it as
potentially invading the privacy of the people who access your
page.
When I surf the web, I don't regard it as anybody's business but
my own what web pages I decide to read. Just as I don't regard it
as anybody's business but my own what books I buy or check out
of the library. I realize that for its own internal accounting,
the library has to know who has checked out what, at least while
it's checked out. But I'd be rather upset if they made their
checkout records publicly available.
I realize that Picospan violates this principle by using partici-
pation files that are readable by anybody. But that doesn't mean
we should be looking for new ways to invade privacy.
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janc
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response 2 of 23:
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Mar 12 15:00 UTC 1997 |
What if we made tools available that reported statistics on how many
people were visiting your web pages, but didn't list who had visited them?
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janc
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response 3 of 23:
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Mar 12 15:46 UTC 1997 |
Oops, We already do that. It's at http://www.cyberspace.org/stats/.
Hmmm...abbagirl is still getting more hits than backtalk. And one
of our more popular sites is full of poetry in Urdu.
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cmcgee
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response 4 of 23:
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Mar 12 16:20 UTC 1997 |
I *really* don't want other people to be able to moniter my reading habits!
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robh
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response 5 of 23:
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Mar 12 16:53 UTC 1997 |
I imagine that *most* folks don't want that info made public.
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rcurl
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response 6 of 23:
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Mar 12 18:01 UTC 1997 |
Does the log record *who* accessed a site here, or just from what site
they did so? If it is just the site, that is no invasion of anyone's
privacy, at either end.
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robh
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response 7 of 23:
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Mar 12 20:43 UTC 1997 |
Not necessarily - plenty of folks have their own IP address
these days.
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rcurl
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response 8 of 23:
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Mar 12 22:49 UTC 1997 |
Oh...the RICH people (with degrees).
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robh
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response 9 of 23:
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Mar 12 23:17 UTC 1997 |
There's no correlation there, though, I have a degree and I'm
far from rich. >8)
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dang
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response 10 of 23:
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Mar 12 23:22 UTC 1997 |
And too, whenever you make a PPP conection, you get your own IP address that
is tracable to the login you used to establish the connection. In fact,
sometimes it's automatic. When I log in to UM, the IP address I get is
designated "dang.umich.edu" for the duration of my login.
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scg
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response 11 of 23:
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Mar 12 23:48 UTC 1997 |
The computers I use at work are rootbeer.wwnet.net and lemonade.wwnet.net.
Nobody else uses those computers.
That said, I may be somewhat in the minority in that I really don't care if
somebody sees what I've been looking at. If other people see it as a big
privacy concern, though, I'll respect that.
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aruba
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response 12 of 23:
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Mar 13 02:40 UTC 1997 |
Yeah, my computer at work has its own IP address too.
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cmcgee
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response 13 of 23:
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Mar 13 04:42 UTC 1997 |
A question: when I use "lynx www.whatever" does that get recorded by the
website I visit? I assumed it did, but this has made me think about it again.
If it does get recorded, what is it that they track? <in simple language,
folks :-) >
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scg
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response 14 of 23:
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Mar 13 05:57 UTC 1997 |
It really depends on the web site. Generally at a minimum your IP address
(or in this case Grex's IP address), what page you visited, and what time you
visited it. Often it will also record other things, such as any information
from identd (in your case, cmcgee@grex.cyberspace.org), what kind of browser
you were using, and various other things. Lynx actually doesn't supply as
much information to the remote server as some of the more high tech browsers
do. Some of those will even tell the site what page you were looking at
before looking at that web site.
What gets recorded, assuming your browser supported it, all depends on how
nosy the person setting up the web server was.
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cmcgee
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response 15 of 23:
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Mar 13 18:30 UTC 1997 |
No browser, just Zterm communications software for my modem. I'm working with
really basic technology.
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tsty
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response 16 of 23:
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Mar 13 18:38 UTC 1997 |
... and what about your 'writing' habits? they are *now* click-accessible.
what is different between reading habits and writing habits?
whose ox is getting gored is the difference. maybe you voted for gore
in one instance and now it's a different ox. just more gore, no problem.
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remmers
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response 17 of 23:
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Mar 13 18:49 UTC 1997 |
Lynx is a browser, even though you're running it from Grex
instead of from your personal PC.
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remmers
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response 18 of 23:
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Mar 13 19:05 UTC 1997 |
#16 slipped in. When I post something in a public forum, it's
because I want people to read it. On the other hand, making
records of who reads what publicly available is Big Brotherism.
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steve
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response 19 of 23:
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Mar 13 21:59 UTC 1997 |
I favor keeping the logs closed, much as most of the other logs are
clsoed, like the sendmail records who who's received what, from who.
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dpc
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response 20 of 23:
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Mar 13 22:08 UTC 1997 |
Me, too. Let's not open another Pandora's Box.
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mdw
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response 21 of 23:
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Mar 14 03:10 UTC 1997 |
Here's the kind of information that grex's httpd currently records:
= access log =
llama.ifs.umich.edu - - [06/Mar/1997:01:46:29 -0500] "GET /~mdw/ HTTP/1.0" 200
21267 132.236.2.16 - - [07/Mar/1997:16:30:41 -0500] "GET
/~walrus/food/tiramisu_classic.html HTTP/1.0" 404 -
= error log =
[Thu Mar 13 20:58:11 1997] access to //robots.txt failed for 207.77.90.182,
reason: File does not exist [Fri Mar 7 16:30:41 1997] access to
/afs/umich.edu/user/w/a/walrus failed for 132.236.2.16, reason: File does not
exist
(These records actually came from another httpd server, NOT grex, but
the format is actually pretty standard, and grex's will look the same.)
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valerie
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response 22 of 23:
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Mar 14 03:59 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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arianna
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response 23 of 23:
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Jul 11 18:30 UTC 1997 |
*g* A delicious error message, then. d= (;
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