WTF! I have discovered that scribefire add a tracking service at the end of all my posts without any explicit warning:
<div class="zemanta-pixie">
<img src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=[long%20tracking%20number%20here]" class="zemanta-pixie-img" /></div>
This is an invisible image for tracking purposes. This is ON by default, but at least you can disable from options/publishing/Automatically insert invisible tracking pixel for statistics gathering.
The guys at Scribefire are not playing nicely!! They should advertise this thing explicitly and also in the option they should put a link explaining what this 'statistics gathering' is for.
-20 for Scribefire!!!!
Long story:
Scribefire is a useful blogging tool. But I don't trust third part plugins. So I put all of them in quarantine after installing them and after each update (you never know if other not-nice-company has bought them after your last check for niceness).
Scribefire was not different. First of all I don't trust them (not anyone else) to give them my google mail password in order to be able to upload the post. So I created a new google account only for blogging and give access to my main blog.
Also I don't trust the wysiwyg editors not adding rubbish to the html so I always edit in html.
The problem came when I needed to add an image: I selected to upload it with my google api and I was expecting the image to go to my 'picasa', but it is uploaded to a place that I don't lh5.ggpht.com know with no explanation:
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1DqEzpVc8tomJYXwbPc015XvtepfaK2haffW6krD4ikLXB88wJuOSWyb2BdXGPQaZ8NuROTp1C1ft23WQSohwdRi4qJ757swJQn6C4rau6TPQBKXg13Ka47v1Cm4BNtAf4cAzvP7QXIWY/?imgmax=800" />
As I am paranoic with these things, I decided to upload the post as draft and add the photos myself in blogger. But When I edited in html the blog I saw this infamous Zamanta tracking image at the end!!!!
I saw that other blogs are reporting this since one year ago!!!
http://www.simonscullion.com/2009/03/17/scribefire-zemanta-and-a-hidden-tracking-image/
Please ScribeFire you have the rigth to make your software as you please (trakings, addware, advertising etc) but respect my rights of having an INFORMED DECISION on my choices. There are a lot of bad guys around doing nasty things, so good guys should be as open and clear as possible and you are not doing very well at that respect. Shame on you!
Also this is very annoying. My blogs are my blogs and you don't have rights to put things there without my permission!!!!
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1 comment:
After installing Sribefire to Firefox this morning it seems that this feature is no longer set by default, and you can choose to add it, no link explaining it though. Thanks for the heads up.
I don't like to give my google acount details to anyone either, especially now that Google is taking over more and more of my life. What did you mean by 'quarantining' the add-ons? Do you just disable and enable them as you want? Thanks again.
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