Bust-a-name - Privacy concern???
I was playing with bustaname again yesterday when I kept seeing “Waiting for http://tapefailure.com/” on my status bar. I was curious enough to go to the website to see what it was about.
From what I see, it is a service to record form data and login details which means whatever you type on bust-a-name will be recorded. Dig further into their FAQ:
“Does Tapefailure intrude upon my user’s privacy?
Tapefailure only records what occurs on your website; it records nothing outside the browser window or on other websites. It also does not record cookies, internet history, or anything outside your website.”
Okay, so it doesn’t intrude on my privacy. But for a domain name searching and buying website, recording user action and analyzing search trend doesn’t boost user confidence. Who knows what they will do with the data. Maybe find out the most serch terms and buy out the domain name to sell on sedo.com? Who knows…
[update 26/07/07] Ryan comment that they are no longer using the services of tapefailure.com on bustaname. Thanks, Ryan, for taking the effort to clarify this issue.
July 25th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Hey, I got rid of tapefailure. At first I used it to see how people interacted with the site. But I don’t use it anymore.
– Ryan
July 25th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for leaving a comment. But even this morning, when I go into the bust-a-name site, it still load “waiting for http://tapefailure.com” on my status bar, so maybe the tapefailure service is not cleanly uninstalled?
July 25th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Be sure you hit refresh (CTRL+F5) Most likely it is just cached.
– Ryan
July 26th, 2007 at 9:31 am
I refresh it this morning and it doesn’t appear on my status again…I will do a update on my post. Thanks for clarifying.