i'd like to see these capabilities in k-meleon.

You can config Flash from his Flash Player Settings Manager web site.

You can create; a bookmark, a menu item option, a toolbar button, an accelerate, a hotlink to load this web site to settings Flash. (For some options you can use KM Macro language)

About "web bugs/beacons" I don't know what do you mean, can you explain it?
You can use Error console for look errors in web: Tools -> Error Console

K-Meleon in Spanish

"web bugs/beacons" are tiny (sometimes one pixel) spy cookies inserted in web pages or html emails - you can't see them but they track your web habits and know whether you opened a particular page or email.

Web bugs

You can usually block these with Proxomitron and a bit of hard work and/or an up-to-date Hosts file.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2010 06:36PM by mhf.

Good work mhf. Funnily enough I found one in this forum some time ago...


(select all and the 1 pixel transparent gif becomes visible)


Earlier this year I went wild collecting tools and info while manually finding and blocking this kind of thing with my hosts file (rather than just plug in a ready made one). Investigating pages for myself allowed me to see the most numerous and worst offenders and to understand just how amazingly common and sneaky these tracking systems are. It's an interesting study.

Most commercial sites have multiple bugs for analytics and advertising, and Google alone seems to be in most pages on the net. The whole situation is really disgusting but simply disabling javascript strips many away and certainly disables the worst of the tracking. Disabling cookies also helps stop some persistent tracking but the best thing to do is block relevant domains entirely, like with your hosts file.

I believe a complete web bug killing solution will only be possible with a third party program or K-Meleon extension of some kind (things like Proxomitron, Privoxy, AdblockPlus, Ghostery), due to the need for extensive domain databases and code sniffing tricks. I haven't yet investigated any of KM's own ad blocking and stylesheet capabilities but there might be some css injection trick to block the download of all 1x1 pixel images (which might also lead to occasional page alignment problems)

Any image or content loaded from a third party server could be considered a bug or beacon, with images setting cookies and remote scripts doing who knows what. I've personally blocked access to every single scrap of facebook content (buttons, widgets, scripts, etc.) because I resented the fact I was being connected to their servers on just about every page I visited out there. I've even taken the time to block the hosts of every social media widget and beacon I see (I'm anti-social, eh), and if I ever need to see one of those sites I just use a web based proxy to have a peek.


From: http://www.physorg.com/news163177801.html

Quote

It turns out that a handful of tracking companies operating Web bugs have an incredible breadth of coverage, the researchers said. For example, five tracking companies were represented on more than half of the top 100 Web sites examined in the study, while Web bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of the approximately 400,000 unique domains examined in the study. "Web bugs are ubiquitous," said Soltani. During the month of March 2009, the researchers found at least one Web bug on each of the top 50 Web sites, while most sites had several Web bugs and some had as many as 100.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2010 05:23AM by Doon.

This isn't dangerous in K-Meleon forum, Piwik is the name of the statistics system used by Sourceforge.
The system check how many times the pixel image is loaded to calculate how many visit to the page were did.

Thanks for explanions.

Sure already exist some Firefox Add-On to do it, If you can found it we can try if work with K-Meleon.

K-Meleon in Spanish



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2010 10:20PM by desga2.

It is not that web bugs or beacons are "dangerous" in themselves, it is more about what they do and what they are there for - if you are interested read this long post.

mhf, i found a similar service to ghostery called privacy choice and made a macro based on their bookmarklet
http://www.privacychoice.org/trackerwatcher/download

it doesn't seem to be working on all sites..not sure if because some sites are safe, so it doesn't trigger a popup?

you can try it there http://kmext.sourceforge.net/tests/privacychoice.kmm

rightclick on the page and select 'trackscan'

when it detects something, it oens a popup like this


there's also something unsettling about ghostery itself
http://www.ghostery.com/faq

simpler, there is Clear Flash Cookies extension

Quote

deletes the flash plugin cookies that have been created by swf applications.
menu entry: tools>privacy>clear data>clear flashcookies

or you can grab an external app.

Quote
disrupted(unlogged)
mhf, i found a similar service to ghostery called privacy choice and made a macro based on their bookmarklet
http://www.privacychoice.org/trackerwatcher/download

it doesn't seem to be working on all sites..not sure if because some sites are safe, so it doesn't trigger a popup?

Nice one disrupted - it's true that it doesn't seem to work on all sites however when it does work on a safe site the pop-up appears but empty which is I suppose what it's supposed to do.

I thought I'd try it on Alexa but the site was blocked by my Hosts file

Matt - I also have the Clear Flash Cookies extension installed - thanks for that.

Wonder where the OP went ?

Another thread about FC : the Flash Zombies - I don't go with everything on that forum : there's some rather weird politics sometimes.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2010 08:25AM by mhf.

*Bump*

It would be great to see this stuff native in K-meleon. I have the Clear Flash Cookies extension installed, but I have to jog through a menu to get to it each time that I want to use it. Also, when using the toolbar button 'Clear All', flash cookies aren't cleared along with other data.