White House web revisited (using webtrends tracking)

The Guardian ^ | 1/25/2009 | Jack Schofield

[markomalley]

(beginning of article snipped)

Obama's team may not be so lucky. It got off to a bad start by breaking loads of existing links, and by using WebTrends tracking code without making this clear to users. Also, while everybody loves YouTube, it may not be the best idea to serve WhiteHouse.gov videos from there. YouTube is owned by Google, which was one of Obama's contributors.

(snip)

[markomalley]

(Emphasis above added by me) Nice to know that you'll be tracked by webtrends if you happen to visit Ø's website...real nice...

[Cindy]

[dianed]

“Obama first president to EXPLOIT the web...”

and the people who use it.

[Perdogg]

Wasn’t there some issue about the DoD or DARP using tracking cookies?

[markomalley]

Wasn’t there some issue about the DoD or DARP using tracking cookies?

Government web sites are not supposed to use tracking cookies...but IIRC, it is simply a regulation, not a law...

So Ø doesn't even have to pretend to follow the rules in that case

[Paleo Conservative]

Does anyone have a clone of whitehouse.gov made before the Obamanation?

[Lauren BaRecall]

So would this be a regular cookie in “My Cookies?” I saw the new site a few days ago, but didn’t go to the blog.

It is one of the most miserable looking websites I’ve ever seen. The previous one was very attractive, IMO.

[markomalley]

Does anyone have a clone of whitehouse.gov made before the Obamanation?

Web Archive has it up to six months ago (and they don't publish anything prior to six months delay...so in 6 months, they will have it up to Jan 19th)

[Lauren BaRecall]

I just looked there, and it looks more like a site map than the actual web page.

[rod1]

Obama is BIG BROTHER.

[a fool in paradise]

Obama’s mad hackers are violating established law. 13 year olds are supposed to be exempted from such practices.

[a fool in paradise]

IT should appear sooner than later (like RIGHT NOW, demand it of the Obamastration) in the National Archives website (the Clinton white house site is linked there).

[GatorGirl]

Is it because he’s now a “miserable failure”???

[markomalley]

I just looked there, and it looks more like a site map than the actual web page.

You click on a date, from the index page I linked to, and a copy of the website from that date should appear.

[Lauren BaRecall]

I did.

But I found this:

Before and after

Did you see my cookies question?

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Is this a message to Zero?: “All your bases are belong to us”? ;)

[meyer]

Government web sites are not supposed to use tracking cookies...but IIRC, it is simply a regulation, not a law...

Go to www.tva.gov and see what you get. Yes, there's a cookie.

[Wolfstar]

Does anyone have a clone of whitehouse.gov made before the Obamanation?

It doesn't exist. The Obama crowd broke all links to historical GWB material. The GWB Presidential Library site says they will have an archival version up. Don't know when, though.

You can go to my personal FR page for significant passages from President Bush's most important speeches. Others here have saved photos.

[Wolfstar]

Thank you SO very much for that link to the web archive. I can’t tell you how much this will be appreciated by many here on FR.

[markomalley]

I did.

But I found this:

Before and after

Did you see my cookies question?

Just took this screenshot from web archive:

I only saw a session cookie from whitehouse.gov, but they could easily use a third party cookie that would take more time to locate than I, frankly, want to dedicate. (For example, use a zero pixel webbug that has a cookie attached).

I always use the distrust add-on to my firefox, so I'm not worried too much about it anyway.

[Lauren BaRecall]

Thanks, for both. :o)

[TigersEye]

WH website used to promote false interpretation of the BoRs.

"The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms."

[Thunder90]

Whitehouse.gov looks like barackobama.com, Obama’s campaign website.

[markomalley]

Whitehouse.gov looks like barackobama.com, Obama’s campaign website.

Hmmmm...you noticed that, huh?

Probably the same web designer!

[Salvation]

One of the reasons I won’t go there — and stopped posting the Weekly Radio Address.

[JACKRUSSELL]

Deleted from my bookmarks just before the coronation.

[Buddy B]

Welcome to the White House
Page Source: Minus these keyboard characters:   < >

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" head
title id="PageTitle">Welcome to the White House/title meta name="keywords" content="President, Barack Obama, White House, United States of America, 44th President, White House history, President Obama, Barck, Barek, Barak, Barrack, Barrak, Obma, Barack" /

meta name="description" content="WhiteHouse.gov is the official web site for the White House and President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. This site is a source for information about the President, White House news and policies, White House history, and the federal government." /

link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="White House.gov Agenda Articles Feed" href="/feed/agenda/" /
link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="White House.gov Press Office Feed" href="/feed/press/"
link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="White House.gov Blog Feed" href="/feed/blog/" / link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="White House.gov Photo Gallery Feed" href="/feed/gallery/" /
link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="White House.gov Video Feed" href="/feed/video/" /

script src="/includes/functions.js.aspx" type="text/javascript"> link rel="stylesheet" href="/includes/eop/admin.css" type="text/css" media="all" /
link rel="stylesheet" href="/includes/eop/style.css" type="text/css" media="all" /
link rel="stylesheet" href="/includes/eop/print.css" type="text/css" media="print" /
!--[if lt IE 7]link rel="stylesheet" href="/includes/eop/ltie7.css" type="text/css" /
![endif]--

script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/eop/jquery-1.2.6.min.js"> script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/eop/jquery-plugins.js"/script
script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/eop/jqfunctions.js"/script
script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/eop/swfobject.js"/script

link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/eop/jquery.jcarousel.css" /

script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/eop/jquery.thickbox.js"/script
script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/externallinks.js"/script
script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/webtrends.js"/script

Excerpted: 01/25/2009

[markomalley]

OK...

and here's your webbug:

---

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
var _tag=new WebTrends();
//]]>>
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
// Add custom parameters here.
//_tag.DCSext.param_name=param_value;
_tag.dcsCollect();
//]]>>
</script>
<noscript>
<div><img alt="DCSIMG" id="DCSIMG" width="1" height="1" src="http://statse.webtrendslive.com/dcs0l9nq800000ctek411lue6_2c8b/njs.gif?
dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No&DCS.dcscfg=1&WT.tv=8.6.0"/></div>
</noscript>

---

So that's that...

[Buddy B]

Thanks.....it is now documented on FR.....

[thecodont]

It's also on the National Archives Web site.

http://www.archives.gov

!-- START OF SmartSource Data Collector TAG --
!-- Copyright (c) 1996-2006 WebTrends Inc. All rights reserved. --
!-- $DateTime: 2006/03/01 12:51:54 $ --
script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/javascript/webtrends/dcs_wtid.js"> /script>
script type="text/javascript" src="/includes/javascript/webtrends/dcs_tag.js">
noscript>
img alt="" name="DCSIMG" width="1" height="1" src="http://wbtdcs.nara.gov/dcs5w0txb10000wocrvqy1nqm_6n1p/njs.gif?
dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No" />
/noscript>
!-- END OF SmartSource Data Collector TAG -->

_____

How does one protect against/get rid of Web bugs?

[Illinois is a Red State]

I recommend you ALL send an email to Mr. Obama’s website via this link...

comments@whitehouse.gov

And tell him we will NOT stand for the attempted erasing of the past and that he needs to restore the version of the website we’ve been seeing FOR THE LAST 8 YEARS in some form... this Orweillian attempt to erase history is a scary precedent, but don’t mention that in your email - that is, if you enjoy staying off watchlists...

[mojitojoe]

I’m lost. So what exactly is it that they are doing?

[thecodont]

Here is some old (1999) information from the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding Web bugs.

The Web Bug FAQ

[Buddy B]

Copyright Policy   White House web site "Copyright Policy".

[Has the Webtrends script.]

#####

script type="text/javascript" //![CDATA[ var _tag=new WebTrends(); //]] /script script type="text/javascript" //![CDATA[ // Add custom parameters here. //_tag.DCSext.param_name=param_value; _tag.dcsCollect(); //]] /script noscript div img alt="DCSIMG" id="DCSIMG" width="1" height="1" src="http://statse.webtrendslive.com/dcs0l9nq800000ctek411lue6_2c8b/njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No&DCS.dcscfg=1&WT.tv=8.6.0"/ /div /noscript

#####

Posted without the < > characters.

[Buddy B]

Site:  statse.webtrendslive.com
Cookie Name:  ACOOKIE

njs.fig (GIF Image, 1x1 pixels):

http://statse.webtrendslive.com/dcs0l9nq800000ctek411lue6_2c8b/njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No&DCS.dcscfg=1&WT.tv=8.6.0

njs.fig (GIF Image, 1x1 pixels)
Blank page to your eyes.

[mojitojoe]

If you delete your cookies is it then gone? If you hide your IP then they can’t get that can they? I never go there unless I use an IP hider and I have a program that cleans all cookies and it’s set to run 3 times a day and also when I reboot.

[thecodont]

You probably want to set your browser to selectively accept cookies (i.e. only from sites you navigate to), rather than reject all cookies entirely, as some sites require cookies (such as this one, if you are logging in to your account).

That program you're running sounds like you should be OK.

I found out from someone that Yahoo.com sets a web beacon (web bug) but you can remove it by going to their Privacy page and choosing to opt out of web beacons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_bug

[markomalley]

The big difference between the two is that the one on the White House website is from: http://statse.webtrendslive.com (a DIFFERENT domain than www.whitehouse.gov), while the one you identified is from http://wbtdcs.nara.gov (the SAME domain as the www.archives.gov — nara and archives are the same thing)

The issue is that in order to load whitehouse.gov, your browser will get that little 1X1 file from statse.webtrends.com. So statse.webtrends.com will record your IP address in its log. Now let’s say that you go to another site that uses webtrends. Then webtrends will be able to track your IP address to that site. And so on: so that they can establish a profile for the type of sites that you visit. Thus impacting your privacy.

Now what do they do with that information? That’s another question entirely.

The difference between the 1X1 gif used on the WH site and the one used on the NARA site is that the gif on the WH site takes you to a third party site that is outside of the government: to a known data collector.

Not that using a service like webtrends is a good thing, but it’s a whole lot worse when you have webtrends aggregating data for you on THEIR hosts.

[markomalley]

And, of course, one other thing you can do is to update your "HOSTS" file (see here), so that your browser won't even try to go to one of those tracking sites in the first place.