[extrasolid]

Hi again,

at first I still agree that there should be not even one moving ad in the playing window, nor something that makes sound. There should be a possibility to play ad-free.
And to achieve this I still think that you could take some BBO$. Nothing in the world is free, even death costs your life. So I am ready to pay some fee.

If Fred - nice enough - still thinks, Bridge should be broadcasted for free, please be consequent and stop ads at the playing table.

Secondly my spyware warner starts warning when clicking on an ad in the top of the page. /fastclick. Not too nice!!

Uli

[fred]

Hi again Uli,

As Uday has said (repeatedly) we have not made any firm decisions about when ads will be seen, which ads will be seen, or if/how people will be able to do things to prevent ads from being seen.

The version of BBO you are using is a beta version. Ads are always turned on because we need to make sure they are working properly (they are not - there are still some technical problems that we have to work out). We are also trying to get a better sense of what our members think of the ads so your opinion is appreciated.

If seeing the ads when you are playing is upsetting you as much as it seems, you have 2 choices:

1) Reinstall the latest official version of BBO
2) Switch to "narrow view" (Control-W)

One thing I can promise you is that we are not aware of any "spyware" or anything else that might harm your computer in any of these ads and that this is not acceptable to us. This will be investigated and, if it turns out you are right, it will be stopped.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[uday]

Quote

Secondly my spyware warner starts warning when clicking on an ad in the top of the page. /fastclick. Not too nice!!

If it goes off on every ad, there is something broken about your warner. Example: at least 4 of those ads are homegrown ads, with nothing behind them except links to these forums, the acbl web page, etc.

We have considerable control over which ads are shown, and we try to make sure that nothing is offered that involves downloading software, screensavers, etc.

If you find a specific ad that slips through, let us know and we'll toss it.

Re: ads themselves -- "what he said"

[hrothgar]

I think that it would be useful to differentiate between “Spyware” and “Tracking Cookies”. Formally, Spyware is a third party executable that is running as a background task on your computer. Spyware can be used for a number of malicious purposes. (Keystroke logging is probably the most troubling example). A cookie is a file that sit on your PC and tracks the websites that your browser visits. (Browser's use cookies for a number of benign purposes. Cache passwords in one well known example. Determine whether graphics on websites need to be updated is another). When people talk about “Tracking Cookies” they're referred to analyzing the information in a Cookie file to determine what websites a person is visiting. Wikipedia has a decent enough discussion of the topic. http://en.wikipedia....iki/HTTP_cookie

While Fastclick is well known for its aggressive use of Tracking Cookies, I've haven't heard any examples where they were actually loading keystroke loggers or any other examples of true spyware. Personally, I think that Extrasolid's anti-spyware system is trying to make its end-users paranoid. The more scared they are, the more likely they are to buy anti-spyware systems. (Computer security is a very real concern, but a lot of the vendors including my ex-employer Symantec really go overboard with the whole “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” thing)

With all this said and done, it is possible that the browser embedded in BBO could be used for some kind of security exploit. No software is perfect. Hypothetically, something like the following could happen:

1. The Browser embedded in the BBO client suffers from a buffer overflow or some other flaw
2. Someone notices this little glitch and designs a web page to exploit this code flaw
3. The buffer overflow (or whatever glitch is being exploited) is masked underneath a normal looking ad
4. BBO gets paid to host the ad, lots of computers get compromised...

Do I believe that this is at all likely? No
Do I believe that this is in the realm of the possible. Most certainly...

[inquiry]

Rather than complain, when you are sitting thjere waiting for a table or your partner to log in, click one or two of the ads. This will help earn some small piece of money for BBO.. that has got to be good... I click em.

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Oct 30 2006, 12:14 AM, said:

Rather than complain, when you are sitting thjere waiting for a table or your partner to log in, click one or two of the ads. This will help earn some small piece of money for BBO.. that has got to be good... I click em.

Maybe, Maybe not...

There are three different pricing models in common use for internet ads.

Model 1 is based on page views: BBO would recieve a small amount of money for each individual that saw the ad on their screen

Model 2 is based on click throughs: BBO would receive a slightly larger amount of money for each person that clicked on the ad and looked at the more detailed information

Model 3 is based on conversion: BBO gets even more money each time that people purchase the item in question

I have no idea which revenue model BBO negotiated with its advertizers. (Given that some of the ads are for perscription drugs, Model 3 seems quite unlikely, though its possible that they might have different models for different advertisers)

The click-through model started to get popular for a while, however, click rings started up where folks would hire people to sit and click on ads for VERY VERY small amounts of money.

[uday]

Yeah. Don't click on ads for our benefit. Just for yours, if you find them interesting enough to pursue. If no, no matter.

[csdenmark]

inquiry, on Oct 29 2006, 11:14 PM, said:

Rather than complain, when you are sitting thjere waiting for a table or your partner to log in, click one or two of the ads. This will help earn some small piece of money for BBO.. that has got to be good... I click em.

I prefer not Ben. If I click a commercial then it is because I am basically interested in the product/service advertised for.

For the healthy economy of BBO, just like Ulrich, I prefer to pay BBO for the service provided. I think time has come seriously to consider a premium service option.

[barmar]

The thing I find most annoying about the ads is the frequent clicks that they make. I think it's whenever it starts an animation cycle.

I think I have the Sounds control panel set to not make these clicks in my browser when it changes pages, but this doesn't seem to influence BBO's ads. Any suggestions?

Edit: Never mind, I just saw uday's post in another thread about this. I had the "Complete Navigation" sounds set to None, but didn't have "Start Navigation" set.

[uday]

The clicks are gone from the banners at the top of the page.

The clicks are still present at the table but they'll be gone in a day or two (am waiting for some minor tech support from the ad people)

[1eyedjack]

One personal opinion out of tens of thousands:
I would rather see adverts than pay a subscription for the service.

Ok, that said:

The principal reason why I (generally) try to block advertising domains at the router is that I am concerned about the installation of tracking cookies, as discussed earlier in this thread. With the exception of the BBO implementation this has been highly successful. BBO is unique in generating script errors as a result of that action. At other sites, my policy has successfully blocked adverts without resulting in script errors.

Now, I am no IT guru, and when my security suite advises me that there is a risk posed by tracking cookies I simply take their word for it. I grant that the risk is normally flagged as low. That said, if I can block the tracking cookie I will do so.

Ironically, I would not even attempt to block the advert itself, were it not for the policy of the advertisers to attempt their invasion of my PC. If they were simply content to present the advert on my screen, for me to click on or not according to my interest, then they would at least succeed in delivering the advert to my screen, where currently their policy results in not only the tracking cookie being blocked but also the advertisement itself. If only the community at large followed this example, the advertisers might think twice about the benefits of invading potential customers' machines.

Those who host the advertisements (ie BBO admin in this case) are in perhaps in a better position to wield clout, being (a_) better educated and informed in the issues concerned and (b_) having limited control over selecting advertisements to be displayed that do not exhibit this aggressive clandesdine behaviour, and (c_) their decisions affecting all of the "customers" who pass through the site.

With up to 10000 members regularly online at a time, BBO has considerable power over the adversing providers, who I should expect are falling over themselves to get adverts onto the BBO interface, and BBO should not be reticent about specifying terms and conditions under which THEY will enter into business.

[barmar]

While I can certainly understand your privacy concern, I hope you can also see things from the advertiser's point of view. They need to know how many users are seeing their ads. But they can't just go by the web server hits. If your BBO session cycles around to the same ad over and over, that's still only one set of eyeballs. They need to distinguish between an ad being displayed 10 times to the same user and 1 time each to 10 different users. And cookies are the way they usually do this -- they identify a "repeat customer".

[hotShot]

Unfortunately, this cookie identifies your eyeballs on any site you visit and that uses the same adserver. This way they learn which webpages you visit and get a good profile about what you are interested in.
Of cause this is only to better select the ads that you are really interested in.
If they had your real life address they could sell this profile, so that only those advertising letters reach you, that you are really interested in.
If you should happen to enter your personal data on a page with ads on it,
there is no technical problem that is keeping them from learning who you are.
Of cause they could ask a client, if you bought something there, who you really are.

[csdenmark]

hotShot, on Oct 30 2006, 11:29 PM, said:

Unfortunately, this cookie identifies your eyeballs on any site you visit and that uses the same adserver. This way they learn which webpages you visit and get a good profile about what you are interested in.
Of cause this is only to better select the ads that you are really interested in.
If they had your real life address they could sell this profile, so that only those advertising letters reach you, that you are really interested in.
If you should happen to enter your personal data on a page with ads on it,
there is no technical problem that is keeping them from learning who you are.
Of cause they could ask a client, if you bought something there, who you really are.

You change your acceptance of cookies in Internet Explorer in this way:

- Go into 'Tools'
- Go into 'Privacy'
- Decide your level of acceptance

Cookies are mostly relative harmless. Maybe you will need to report a few spam-mails - that's all.

Cookies are also doing a really good work - they helps you entering sites with logins, filling in forms etc.

[1eyedjack]

barmar, on Oct 30 2006, 09:52 PM, said:

While I can certainly understand your privacy concern, I hope you can also see things from the advertiser's point of view.  They need to know how many users are seeing their ads.  But they can't just go by the web server hits.

They *NEED* to know nothing of the sort. The information is *helpful* to them, no doubt, but they do not *need* to know it any more than they *need* to know who drives past an advertising poster on the side of the road or whether they pass it several times in the day. They will not go to the wall for want of that data. The only distinction is that in the case of cookies the technology is available to satisfy that desire (and it is no more than desire), subject to the passive co-operation of the customer-base. Would you regard it as acceptable for it to be compulsory to complete and return the marketing surveys that are posted through your letterbox, on the grounds that the marketing company *needs* to know your opinion?

The population of individuals who are exposed to an advertisement falls into two categories: those who are interested in the product and those who are not. Whilst I have no particular training or experience in marketing, I have difficulty accepting that it is of use to the advertisers to identify the numbers of those who fall into the "not interested" category. Those who fall into the "interested" category can be tallied by their clicking on the advertisement. The rest of us should be left in peace.

csdenmark, on Oct 31 2006, 02:03 AM, said:

You change your acceptance of cookies in Internet Explorer in this way:

- Go into 'Tools'
- Go into 'Privacy'
- Decide your level of acceptance

Cookies are mostly relative harmless. Maybe you will need to report a few spam-mails - that's all.

Cookies are also doing a really good work - they helps you entering sites with logins, filling in forms etc.

Disabling cookies at OS level gives rise to separate inconveniences. As you say, there are some cookies that you want on the system. Likewise, configuring it so that it prompts you each time whether or not to accept a cookie makes surfing unbearable.

Perhaps the solution is to have a system that maintains two lists: One list of domains from which it accepts cookies without prompting, and one list from which it prohibits cookies without prompting. On encountering a new domain you would be prompted just the once, and the domain would be added to the appropriate list based on your response to that prompt, never to be repeated.

That seems such an obvious solution that it is probably already built in, but I just haven't noticed it. Otherwise it is a matter of applying pressure to bear on the "naughty" advertisers, but I suspect that is akin to peeing into the wind.

[mycroft]

Built in to Firefox, at least. Unfortunately, and despite my best efforts, and for the most obvious and sensible of reasons, if I want to use BBO, I get to play with my mostly unconfigured IE. So I not only block all cookies in IE, I set (almost all of) my cookies in Firefox to disappear after the session - the only ones I keep are forum history-type.

Advertisers want to track my viewing habits? Fine. They want to use my machine to do so? Stick that in that well-known place in Lancre.

Michael.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on Oct 31 2006, 03:53 AM, said:

barmar, on Oct 30 2006, 09:52 PM, said:

While I can certainly understand your privacy concern, I hope you can also see things from the advertiser's point of view.  They need to know how many users are seeing their ads.  But they can't just go by the web server hits.

They *NEED* to know nothing of the sort. The information is *helpful* to them, no doubt, but they do not *need* to know it any more than they *need* to know who drives past an advertising poster on the side of the road or whether they pass it several times in the day.

Accurate data about the ad views makes the ads more valuable to the advertisers. More valuable ads should translate into higher payments to the sites hosting the ads. And this means that the sites are able to do more for you for free. So they "need" the data to justify the amount they're paying for placement of the ads.

In other words, we all pay for "free" web sites by tolerating this minor privacy intrusion. The more we colectively tolerate, the more they'll subsidize sites like BBO.

[uday]

OT: I think that the ads at the table no longer 'click' or grab focus.

[hrothgar]

mycroft, on Oct 31 2006, 08:08 PM, said:

Built in to Firefox, at least. Unfortunately, and despite my best efforts, and for the most obvious and sensible of reasons, if I want to use BBO, I get to play with my mostly unconfigured IE. So I not only block all cookies in IE, I set (almost all of) my cookies in Firefox to disappear after the session - the only ones I keep are forum history-type.

Advertisers want to track my viewing habits? Fine. They want to use my machine to do so? Stick that in that well-known place in Lancre.

Michael.

I'm not quite sure how BBO leverages Internet Explorer... There is a couple different ways in which this might be done.

One option is to leverage the IE code that is pre-installed on most PCs out there. (Case in point, I use Firefox, however, I haven't removed IE from my system). If this were the case, than players probably have the option to configure the behaviour of IE. In addition, the security of the IE code would depend on how vigilent players are in patching their web-browsers.

Alternatively, BBO could have embedded IE into the BBO client. If this is what happened, players probably can't configure the behavior of this specific web browser. On the other hand, Fred and Uday might have the ability to block cookies in the embedded browser.

[uday]

We instantiate an instance of the microsoft browser control. AFAIK, this uses all your normal IE settings. We do this in the lobby popup, for help-me-find-a-game and here and there in the client.

I'm pretty sure you can get IE to block session cookies, or all cookies. Launch IE, configure it as you please, then i think the next instance of bbo will reflect the changes.