The use of web bugs at Homeconnection - Speech or Presentation Example

The Uses of Web Bugs in Home Connections Introduction A web bug is a graphic on a web page or in an electronic mail communication that is developed to check people who are reading the web page or electronic mail message. Web Bugs are usually undetectable since they are characteristically only 1-by-1 pixel in dimension. They are symbolized as HTML tags. They are usually invisible in the web page or electronic mail so as to conceal the fact that the page is in fact being monitored. However, bugs are not always invisible because any images that are used in the web page can actually be considered web bugs.

Information is usually sent to a server when a web bug is viewed by people. Firstly, the IP address of the computer system that viewed the bug. An IP address is a unique number that is developed when the computer system has been manufactured, and it is usually for communication purposes with the servers when the computer is connected to the internet. The other information sent to the server is website details where the bug is located, the URL of the web page graphic and lastly the kind of browser that viewed that web bug graphic(Stefanie Olsen 76).

Web bugs are usually by advertising networks to key in information to people’s personal profiles of the websites a person is viewing. The individual profile is usually determined by the browser cookie of the advertising networks. In addition, web bugs are usually used to collect data relating to how many people have viewed a particular website, and this helps the website’s developers to determine whether the web page is of any meaning to the general world. Last but not least, web bugs are used to collect statistics about the usage of web browsers at varied locations on the internet (Wendell  531).

The other use of a web bug is that it can be utilized to determine whether a certain message sent was actually read by the recipient. This enables the sender of the message to evaluated whether the information that he/she was passing on to the recipient whether it was actually received. In addition to this, some people always try to be anonymous when sending information. As stated earlier, the server collects the IP address is provided by the web bug. This IP address can be used to get the location of the sender of the message.

This helps in preventing cyber crimes. When used in organizations, web bugs usually give computer specialists an idea of how many times a message has been read and distributed to other persons inside or outside the organization. Web bugs are used to accumulate little amounts of data on the user’s hard disc and swap it with the website server every time the web page is opened. Presently, the principal confidentiality risk is the capability to keenly followed website visitors by giving an exclusive label that is kept in the server and preserved by the website.

As a consequence, each time the web user opens the web page, the exclusive label stored in the server is harmonized with a label kept in a database on the website, arising from browsing routine information being stored and maintained on particular web visitors and therefore web bugs can be used to identify new visitors to the website while other collect specific user information which can be used by website developers to improve on the contents of their websites (Garfinkel 47). Web bugs can as well be utilized to protect information against illegal use and copying of other people’s written arts of work.

If a webmaster puts a bug on every page in a website and an unauthorized individual copies the content to their pwersonal website, each moment a person at the distant website clicks to study that content, the fixed web bug will trace the content to the initial website. The webmaster can find confirmation of this by analyzing server data. Conclusion The use of web bugs in web pages is usually contentious. This is because they permit citizens to be checked when they least expect it, they undoubtedly can be extremely disturbing.

For instance, most computer users will always be distressed to discover that an unknown person is monitoring when they read their mails. To some people, it is unethical to use web bugs, but to others it is advantageous to use them for security reasons among others. While to others, they are not even aware that web bugs actually exist. Works Cited Wendell O. Computer Networking, New York, Cisco Press, 2004. Garfinkel S., Spafford G., Web Security, Privacy and Commerce, USA, O'Reilly Media Inc,2000.

Richard M. Smith, Web Bug Basics, New York Macmillan Publishers, 1999.