PROBLEM: Tonight when I visited the Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) Access was prevented by my security software. The offending action that would not allow me to load The Drudge Report was: tags.expo9.exponential.com. The drudgereport.com would not load without this site being loaded.

SOLUTION: I modified my .HOSTS file to redirect tags.expo9.exponential.com to my internal loopback address 127.0.0.1. When I reloaded my hosts file I was able to load drudgereport.com because I fooled the system into thinking that it was allowed to load, when in actuality, it wasn’t. Now I can view Drudge without having my privacy and security compromised by whatever tags.expo9.exponential.com does.  You can bet it has nothing to do with news.

SUMMARY:  exponential.com has several brands that are involved in online advertising and statistics. These brands aree:

Tribal Fusion® Premium CPM Advertising

FullTango™ Performance Marketers

LeadGenuity™ Lead Generation Specialists

EchoTopic™ Contextual Advertising

RECOMENDATIONS: the spyware running on Drudge seems to be using an image tracer that logs every time that image is loaded by a visitor. This records referrer information, IP address, ISP host and even geographical location. Because many of these services run on so many web sites, the folks at exponential can readily profile you and recreate you as more of you information such as sites visited, and referrers enter their database, and you become a virtual person within their profile.

Make sure that you create entries in your .HOSTS file for tags.expo9.exponential.com, for *.exponential.com, and for www.exponential.com.  Redirect these offending domains to 127.00.1.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Computers/Tech/Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.