NickPick Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 I've just noticed that at the bottom of a cacher's profile page, there's a transparent 4x4 pixel gif file, named "pixel.gif". I only noticed it cos my browser's just been upgraded to IE 6, and it pops up a menu when I point at a picture on a page. Does anyone know what the gif is for? Link to comment
+Maingray Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 Old trick to manage white space on a web page. Single Pixel Trick Link to comment
+Mr. Snazz Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 Its in the image protection program. Shhh! Link to comment
+RuffRidr Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 Small transparent .gifs (or any externally hosted image for that matter) can also be used to track the IP address of every machine that visits your profile page. --RuffRidr Link to comment
+Tonsil Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 True enough, but before you make people (more) paranoid, I think in this case the image is hosted locally, meaning by gc.c. If they want to log your IP, they don't have to resort to any trickery to do so. Which isn't to say that you couldn't try to conceal it, either. Now where did I leave my tinfoil hat? Link to comment
+fly46 Posted March 9, 2005 Share Posted March 9, 2005 Its in the image protection program. Shhh! Darn it! You've found it! You see, that image was from navicache and it ran for it's life to the good caching site, except that now the navicache people are after it. ROTFLMAO! Link to comment
NickPick Posted March 9, 2005 Author Share Posted March 9, 2005 Thanks for the responses. I noticed after my OP that the page source code sizes the image to 400 wide and 200 high, so I guess it's there to insert a blank space under the profile, and using a 16byte image uses minimal bandwidth. I had heard that spam email tracking is done with similar images as 'webbugs' Thanks a lot, Nick Link to comment
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