ID: IRCNE2011081224
Date: 2011-08-23
According to "techworld", Microsoft has disabled an online tracking technology that a Stanford University researcher said allowed the company to track users on MSN.com, even after they deleted browser cookies and other identifiers.
Mike Hintze, Microsoft's associate general counsel, said the company took "immediate action" when it learned about the presence of so-called "supercookies" on its networks from Stanford University researcher Jonathan Mayer.
After Mayer identified Microsoft as one of several companies using supercookies for targeted advertising, the company investigated. Mayer's research prompted Microsoft to move faster to disable the code, Hintze said.
Supercookies are tracking mechanisms that do not rely on traditional browser cookies to store user browsing data. One problem with supercookies is that they are stored outside a browser, meaning they work outside browser privacy protections, said Ashkan Soltani, an independent security researcher and co-author of the UC Berkeley report. As a result, switching browsers to protect privacy doesn't help, Soltani said.
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