[racket-dev] spam & planet bug reports

From: Matthias Felleisen (matthias at ccs.neu.edu)
Date: Sat Dec 11 13:47:24 EST 2010


How difficult is it to implement one as a Planet lib that avoids tracking? 



On Dec 11, 2010, at 1:41 PM, Neil Van Dyke wrote:

> One issue to consider with Recaptcha is that it's incidentally a Web bug that helps track people around the Internet.  If you don't already have Web bugs in your site, by adding one you increase the cross-site tracking.
> 
> In the case of PLaneT bug reports, the privacy and security cost of a Web bug seems negligible.
> 
> However, I think it is good to sanity-check every time you use one of these effective Web bugs.  I've seen sites like anonymous discussion boards on sensitive topics doing things like loading Recaptcha for not only posts (goodbye, posting anonymity), but also for every message a user views (hello, centralized detailed profiling).  In many cases, I believe that site operators who help implement the tracking are unaware of it, although in other cases they might be indifferent or believe that the tracking will be used only for certain purposes they consider to be good.
> 
> Now that I'm in my 30s, my interest in this is academic curiosity rather than activist, but I'd like to have at least Racket people aware of the implications when they decide to use an effective Web bug like Recaptcha.
> 
>> FWIW, recaptcha is really easy to set up. Like less than 10 minutes from
>> not knowing anything about it to having a working system.
>> 
>> http://www.google.com/recaptcha
>>  
> 
> -- 
> http://www.neilvandyke.org/
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