last seen 4 weeks 18 hours agoOk, I am kind of new to the whole tracker blocker world and I just really want to know how it works! It would be great if someone could simplify the explanation as much as possible because I have read the other forums about the blockers and the whole thing is very confusing to me. I downloaded firefox and imported the list onto adblock plus because I understand that the blockers only work this way. So I assume that the blockers for the URL's on the list are working for me now, right? Is there any way for me to check and see if the blockers are working? I have Trakzor for my myspace profile if that makes a difference. Thank you for any explanation!!
how do tracker blockers really work?
Posted on: Tue, 06/26/2007 - 12:34pm
thanks for all the information! it definitely helped me out a lot!
If you want to check to see if you are blocking you can hit my profile - I have two trackers. Drop me a myspace email with who you are and the time and I'll let you know if I track you. If you also want to hit me with your Adblock disabled I will also email to you what you look like on the trackers (I have trackspace and profiletracker).
http://www.myspace.com/smartmomdebbie
>>>>>>>>^..^<<<<<<<<
A wise girl knows her limits but a woman knows she has NONE!
Ok, this turned out quite long. If you don't understand let us know.
First how most trackers work: normally when you open a page you automatically download all the files necessary to display that page. That means images, music, video, javascript, css, flash files. All those files are hosted on a server and when you download them the server keeps a log of that with the time/date of download, your ip, operating system, browser, the address of the website that referred you to the file and more.
On myspace lots of files are linked from other websites. For example with trakzor you put an image on your profile that's hosted on www.trackzor.com. When people open your page they automatically download the image from trakzor's server and the server logs the download. Then they read their logs and display the info to you, the owner of the tracker.
Adblock tells your browser not to download any files that have a certain string of characters in their pathname. So if you filter the string "trackzor.com" nothing will be downloaded from there and you won't be logged. Here, the pathname of the image with the filtered string in bold: http://www.trackzor.com/1351384.jpg
The most simplified way I can explain it (and please, correct me if I am wrong here, GuGees) is that when you visit a webpage, everything needs to load into your browser so it can be viewed.
This includes the various codes for whatever images, text, colors, links, etc. - including codes for trackers.
What trackers do is register the various visits to the page, they are also made up of a specific code.
So what AdBlock does is block the trackers (or ads or whatever it is you tell it to block) codes, so they do not load into your browser.
Hope that made some sense!