# Hasbro Monitoring Enworld?



## BrooklynKnight (May 7, 2004)

I recently downloaded a program that blocks out certain ip address (namely certain large companies) from tracking my ip via programs i use and sites i visit. 

Strangest thing, I click unto Enworlds main page and i get an alert that hasbro was blocked. 

Maybe its cause something is direct linked from the hasbro site on the pront page, i dunno, but i just thought it was..i duno. weird.


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## Darkness (May 7, 2004)

Yah, probably links on the front page, about new releases and such...


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## Umbran (May 7, 2004)

My first guess would be that the cover art images on the upcoming releases are from WotC sites...


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## diaglo (May 7, 2004)

and the WotC site does use stuff (i'm not an IT guy) to track hits and use of its images.

minis, rpg book releases, and even novel covers linked to the WotC site i'm guessing would cause an alert for you.


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## Zappo (May 7, 2004)

I guess that they send you a cookie through the images. It's a fairly normal practice, actually (though I still block them).


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## Umbran (May 7, 2004)

Zappo said:
			
		

> I guess that they send you a cookie through the images. It's a fairly normal practice, actually (though I still block them).




If the software is blocking by IP address, I doubt any cookie would be required.  Simply stop any and all calls to a url that leads to the IP address.  

Here I show my ignorance -  I can understand slipping a cookie call into an html document.  But when EN World only references a JPEG, and does so explicity, can they then slip in a cookie as well?

I double checked the source code on the front page - yes,  the RPG Product Schedule uses image sources on the Wizards site.


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## omokage (May 7, 2004)

You don't need a cookie to track HTTP Referrer hits on an image. If the images are hosted at hasbro, then they can easily find out where the requests are coming from, no need for cookies, just basic HTTP.


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## Zappo (May 7, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> If the software is blocking by IP address, I doubt any cookie would be required. Simply stop any and all calls to a url that leads to the IP address.



Due to the way TCP/IP works, it is entirely impossible to load an image without telling the host of the image your IP, unless you use a proxy or a similar router trick, but this is not the case.







> Here I show my ignorance - I can understand slipping a cookie call into an html document. But when EN World only references a JPEG, and does so explicity, can they then slip in a cookie as well?



The cookie isn't in the HTML document, or in the image, or whatever. It's in the HTTP response. Basically, when you request a file (html, jpg, the content is irrelevant), the server doesn't immediately stream you the file and only the file. There are a bunch of HTTP headers, which may include a cookie.


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## Umbran (May 7, 2004)

Zappo said:
			
		

> Due to the way TCP/IP works, it is entirely impossible to load an image without telling the host of the image your IP, unless you use a proxy or a similar router trick, but this is not the case.




This I understand.  Which is why I thought that for simple counting and such, no cookie is required at all.  Just log the number of requests and to which IP they were sent.



> The cookie isn't in the HTML document, or in the image, or whatever. It's in the HTTP response.




For clarity - when I said I thought of it as being "in the HTML document", I meant it in the same sense that an image reference is in the document - a reference telling the computer to load a file.  I assumed (apparently incorrectly) that it was simply another bit of HTML that they don't teach to those of us who don't need it.



> Basically, when you request a file (html, jpg, the content is irrelevant), the server doesn't immediately stream you the file and only the file. There are a bunch of HTTP headers, which may include a cookie.




And the browser separates out the cookie and saves it as a text file for you?  Hm. Learn something new every day.


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## Angcuru (May 7, 2004)

Damn, I clicked on this link hoping to see a Piratecat Action Figure sometime in the near future, but noooo...


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## Zappo (May 7, 2004)

Yup, cookies have basically nothing to do with HTML.







			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> This I understand. Which is why I thought that for simple counting and such, no cookie is required at all. Just log the number of requests and to which IP they were sent.



Yes and no. Most people use a dial-up connection, which generally speaking changes IP every time you reconnect. Worse, the same IP will be recycled and assigned to another machine tomorrow. Even worse, it is very hard to find out what kind of connection the user has, so you don't even know if the data you're collecting is reliable. Which means that all of it is unreliable, of course. Cookies are the only way to get useful information about accesses by a specific machine.


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## Umbran (May 7, 2004)

Zappo said:
			
		

> Yup, cookies have basically nothing to do with HTML.Yes and no. Most people use a dial-up connection, which generally speaking changes IP every time you reconnect. Worse, the same IP will be recycled and assigned to another machine tomorrow.




Yes, but are not the IP pools that the major providers use well known?  If I happen to use an Earthlink dialup, it's going to show up as an IP from their pool.  So, they'd get a bit of information, at least.  It isn't specific information about an i9ndividual user, but it is soem demographics that can be helpful.


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## thatdarncat (May 8, 2004)

but they can tell (roughly) where you are in the country, so what market you're in. that would give them some good marketing information right there.


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## Darkness (May 8, 2004)

Angcuru said:
			
		

> Damn, I clicked on this link hoping to see a Piratecat Action Figure sometime in the near future, but noooo...



 With Removable Action Hook!


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## Zappo (May 8, 2004)

Yes, without using cookies they can know your provider and they might figure out your approximate geographical location (though this is very unreliable). Cookies are used for tracking single computers. Advertisement companies (such as doubleclick) that host images linked to by thousands of sites can build impressively detailed databases of customer habits this way.


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## Umbran (May 8, 2004)

Zappo said:
			
		

> Advertisement companies (such as doubleclick) that host images linked to by thousands of sites can build impressively detailed databases of customer habits this way.




Yes, but this alone suggests to me that the images on the front page _don't_ have cookies attached to them.  For one thing, collecting and analyzing such data is part of an ad agencie's stock in trade.  It's what they do for a living.  WotC makes games for a living.  They probably aren't set up to handle such data.  

Plus, much of analysis and usefulness of such data relies on you knowing where it was seen.  The ads that track data are _placed_, so you can be sure of a few things about the target audience (like that they actually visited a particular site on days the ad ran).  But the images on the wizards site seems to be open to anyone who wants to use them.  These are not strategically placed ads, greatly diluting the utility of the approach.


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## thatdarncat (May 8, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Yes, but this alone suggests to me that the images on the front page _don't_ have cookies attached to them.  For one thing, collecting and analyzing such data is part of an ad agencie's stock in trade.  It's what they do for a living.  WotC makes games for a living.  They probably aren't set up to handle such data.



Yes, but it's not hard to collect the data and give it to a third party to analyze. Not that I'd have any knowledge of that kind of thing. Nope nope nope.


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## Doppleganger (May 9, 2004)

I'm pretty sure Hasbro uses Hitbox/HBX (a third party service) to track surfing habits and hits across the wizards.com domain.


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## omokage (May 10, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> WotC makes games for a living. They probably aren't set up to handle such data.



They need to make money like anyone else. I'm certain that Hasbro has a large part of their resources dedicated to compiling and analyzing market data. How would they know what games to make and sell if they don't know who is interested in what?


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