Home » post » Federal agencies are tracking visits to U.S. government Web sites

Our mission

Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Federal agencies are tracking visits to U.S. government Web sites

By in post on .

CNET news has done some innovative investigation of government web sites and reports their findings in a new story. “To detect which agencies engage in electronic tracking, CNET News.com wrote a computer program that connected to every agency listed in the official U.S. Government Manual, and then evaluated what monitoring techniques were used.”

Their findings:

Dozens of federal agencies are tracking visits to U.S. government Web sites in violation of long-standing rules designed to protect online privacy, a CNET News.com investigation shows….

The expiration dates of the cookies detected ranged from 2006 to 2038, with most of them marked as valid for at least a decade or two.

  • Government Web sites follow visitors’ movements By Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, CNET News.com, January 5, 2006.

    • CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

    Leave a comment

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    Blogroll

    Archives