Do Not Call Site Has AT&T Stats Tracker?

hookedup writes "The Register is carrying an article about suspicious content at the FTC's Do Not Call site. It has been a runaway hit with US consumers, with over fifty million signing up to avoid spam calls from telemarketers. But the web site hides a little secret: a 1x1 pixel image tracking visitors... and where does the trail lead but to the AT&T, one of the most persistent telemarketers." However, the tipster, James 'Kibo' Parry, notes: "There isn't any evidence proving they _are_ up to anything improper, but this relationship between the FTC and AT&T fails to avoid the potential for impropriety."

So what?

[larry bagina]

Slashdot runs MS ads.

Kibo?

[kaden]

Kibo [kibo.com] is submitting to Slashdot? Party like it's 1989!

Re:So what?

[Kenja]

Dear God your RIGHT! Lock the doors Martha, there gona be comming for me any second now. Get out my good shotgun and push the couch up against the window. You'll never take me alive Slashdot Bastards! You or your Microsoft Overlords.

Incest?

[rlandrum]

Big Brother and Ma Bell in cahoots? Say it's not so!

I'd be willing to bet that after the collosal failure of the FTC site after launch that the FTC sought the hosting services of a more robust entity. AT&T probably said "IT" first.

The real question

[b1t r0t]

Kibo is the one who found this?

In that case, what everyone really wants to know is: "Is AT&T allowed [slashdot.org]?

But....

[MobileDude]

It's just a tiny, wafer-thin image...

(please review Monty Python Meaining of Life prior to modding down)

Re:Oh NO! A tracking pixel!

[Kenja]

Sure, it seems like nothing now. But once all the Opera and Mozilla users have been rounded up, put into camps and executed it'll be too late.

Re:Off by a power of ten?

[c0dedude]

You must be new here. That's only one order of magnatude. Around here, that's pretty good.

Yes, and I'm sure ...

[Anonymous Coward]

all of the 7 people out there still using lynx are feeling mighty vindicated about not jumping on that crazy "graphical browser" nonsense.

Re:Off by a power of ten?

[Murdock037]

Wait until the story is duped a few times, they should all add up to the right number eventually.

Re:Oh NO! A tracking pixel!

[Kenja]

For all you know I could have been talking about the Japanese occupation of China, the US handling of accused terrorists, the US imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent or any other instance of mass imprisonment. Nothing said has anything to do with Goodwin?s Law, so bugger off ya Nazi. Oh dang.

Copy and Paste?

[akiy]

Soooooo....

What would happen if all of us started putting the below image on all of the websites that we run?

Hmm...

<img BORDER="0" NAME="DCSIMG" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" SRC="http://g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net/DCS000003_6D4Q/ njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript">

convert!

[Mr._Anderson]

It's probably due to conversion of English numbers to metric.

Chances are...

[ElYonderboy]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

But maybe MY tin-foli hat is on too tight

[orthogonal]

I'm glad this was reported, and I think it needs to be looked into more closely.

But.

There's this taunting little voice in my head wondering if somebody didn't say,

Web Developer 1: "Hey, let's add a web bug to Do Not Call page, and then we'll leak it to Slashdot."

Web Developer 2: "WTF would we want to do that?

Web Developer 1: "So when they find out about it, we can watch those Slashdot monkeys dance!"

Web Developer 2: "Yeah, yeah, dance dance dance in their tin-foil hats! Coool!"

Oh yea they wanna do that, how about this

[codepunk]

Just link that image into the slashdot home page. That ought to give them about 6 million worthless hits per day...

Re:Ahem...

[edrugtrader]

i just found this list on a soviet russia telemarketing list... i think they already got it!

[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone] ... ...
seriously, this goes on for pages!

Re:Oh NO! A tracking pixel!

[Liselle]

The joke is on them. Opera lets you pretend to be any one of a multitude of web browsers. Right now, I'm MSIE 6.0, tomorrow I could be Mozilla 4.78. Technology is grand!