I wondered the same thing, but when I removed it, that had no effect upon the thread color for those threads I have visited.

The site uses cookies. Set cookies to delete every time you close which ever browser you are using.

John

Personally, I think you'd be nuts to delete the cookies. If you do, you'll have to log in each time. What's more, you'll have to do this for every other site you visit, because the only easy way to make sure you delete the Sony cookies is to delete ALL the cookies. The reason is that not all the cookies involved with Sony will be labeled "Sony." Some of them may just have numbers. As you already found out, the cookie you deleted isn't the one that is used to recognize your return to the site.

Cookies can be used in some shady ways, to be sure. However, for legitimate sites like this one, they sure are a wonderful convenience for the user, which is what they were originally designed to provide.

If you are worried about being tracked, then you shouldn't post. I just clicked on your name and found that you have posted 2585 times, last visited at 7:41 today, and much more. That's not based on cookies, but just on your actual public activity. I'm sure the site operator could, even without cookies, garner even more information about your behavior.

For anyone paranoid about Big Brother, they should find some other place to play besides the Internet. You WILL be watched, no matter where you go and no matter what you do. You will be watched by companies, government officials, perverts, stalkers, terrorists, your children, your parents, your competitors, and your cousin Freddy who is still looking for a way to get back that $100 you owe him.

. . . and yes, John, the REAL trick is to be watched by a client who WANTS my work!

. .Tell me, how do I get her/him/them to watch me? Hmm? YEah? YEah???

Grazie

Tell me, how do I get her/him/them to watch me? Hmm? YEah? YEah???

I remember a comedian, Elaine Boosler, who titled her HBO comedy special, "Live Nude Girls." Drew big ratings. Don't know whether "Live Nude Grazie" will have the same draw ...

Grazie

Offer them a free cookie and coffee :~)

Somewhat reminiscent of "Bare Naked Ladies" or "14 fabulous girls, 13 fabulous costumes!".

that's not 100% true... it's possible to setup a computer to jsut recieve network transmission & never send. Happened to my parents last weekend when their cable modem connection outside went on the fritz! ;)

Evidently, some of you didn't read my reply. I DID delete the "tracking cookie" and in doing so it DID NOT effect how I use the forum: I didn't have to sign in again, I can still see what threads I've read, and so on.

Deleting it did not have any impact on my use of the forum. Hence, it was for something else. My question is WHAT?

I dunno why, but when this site went from Sonic Foundry to Sony Media Software, the number of cookies went from 4 to 26. The four old cookies contained human-understandable names like "username" and "password". Now they have names like "ASPSESSIONIDQQCDTACA" and contain data like "PAHDJLBCKBOMBEDMENBEHPBC". So, which one did you delete? If you delete all of them you will have to log in again.

This a cookie placed on your machine by a company called Omniture who have done so on behalf of Sony Media Software.

It is a mechanism by which Omniture analyses the way visitors to its customers' websites (Sony Media Software's, in this instance) interact with the site - the customer company can supposedly use this data to "improve their websites and make them easier to use".

Although a lot of people believe that Omniture's "2o7.net" domain is being used for some evil purpose (which is why some antispyware products identify it as a risk) as far as I am aware there is not (currently) any truth to this. Omniture themselves are adamant that they "adhere to the strictest industry standards regarding privacy". You can see what they have to say about it here.

Unfortunately it is in the nature of this sort of operation that we only have their word for this - as far as I know there is no way a visitor to one of the websites monitored by the "2o7.net" cookie can discover what use the data collected about their visit is put to. You may feel that you do not want such cookies on your machine, in which case you might wish to use some sort of blocking software to keep them at bay. I note that Omniture offer an opt-out option, but that this option itself requires the acceptance of an "opt-out" cookie. Duh.

Mark

It's simple to add "opt-out" cookies to Internet Explorer. In fact, I just checked mine and I have previously marked "2o7.net" not-allowed to place cookies on my system.

Go to: Tools / Internet Options / Privacy

Click the "Sites" button and add "2o7.net" to the list.

Everytime I run Ad-Aware, I copy down each site noted as suspect and add them my list (e.g. adserver.com, adbureau.net, doubleclick.net, etc)

I have over 100 sites on my cookies not-allowed list.

Jim

I wondered the same thing, but when I removed it, that had no effect upon the thread color for those threads I have visited.

That information isn't stored in cookies. Which threads you've visited (specifically, which links you've clicked before) is stored in your browser's history, which is a completely separate thing.

Rob

As mentioned above, I deleted "jay@sonymediasoftware.122.2o7[1].txt".

Exactly, Rob, that's my point. I was replying to someone who said that would be the case if I had deleted the cookies.

I have 2o7.net blocked at my router, and it's not because of cookies. A lot of ads that appear on various web pages are served from 2o7.net and in many cases the ad images are so large and the server is so bogged down that it takes forever for them to load. On top of that, the ads seem to be strategically placed on the web pages such that the rest of the page won't appear until the ad has loaded. Having 2o7.net and various other ad servers blocked speeds up page load time enormously.

For a while it was taking sometimes a couple of minutes for pages in this forum to load. I thought this was odd since it doesn't have advertising images*. But i blocked 2o7.net and a few others that were linked from here, and now the average load time is maybe a second or less. While i normally have no problem with inline advertisements in a web page (as opposed to popups), if those advertisements make the site nearly unusable then they are not helping the site owners anyway.

*Or maybe there are advertisements here now and i don't see them because they are blocked?

I don't have them blocked and I'm not seeing any ads.
But you're right at times this site is very slow to load, oftenly for no apparent reason it just doesn't load, this explains a lot.
Bob.

This has prompted me to have a proper root around on my machine and I have now found a file called "omniture.js" which seems to be part of the mechanism that is used to collect information on how one uses the Sony Media Software site.

It includes a section that seems to be obfuscated by using the eval trick, and I'm inclined to think that if they weren't doing anything naughty they wouldn't feel the need to hide it in this way, so I no longer feel inclined to accept their assurance that they are on the side of Good. So I'm adding the 2o7.net domain to my list of blocked domains - it will be interesting to see if anything speeds up noticeably.

Mark

That's good to know, Kelly, thanks! How does one block certain things like 2o7.net and where?

This all very interesting. I use Firefox as my browser and was not able to find anything with 2o7.net in it. I searched my entire C: drive.

I did notice that CNN hits some site called cnn.122.2o7.net when launching a video and if I block 2o7.net using Norton Internet Security, the video will not show up.
Tom

Sure we are being watched. Check out

http://www.omniture.com/privacy

There are several statements on their site that are misleading so I am very suspicious of them. I have all their cookies blocked.