What is a Web bug?
At its core, all a web bug consists of is an image. Usually these images are one pixel by one pixel transparent GIF images, although the format isn’t very important. Web bugs are used to track usage by exploiting the way in which HTML image rendering works. Web bugs are found most commonly in email but can also be used on web sites to track usage.
Web Bugs are images, frames, and other objects embedded on a Web site that cause part of the Web page to be retrieved from a completely different Web site. Since the piece retrieved may be as small as a single pixel, you won’t normally realize this is happening, but the bug lets the second Web site know that you visited the original Web site. Banner ads are often tagged with Web bugs just to count the number page views they receive. But there can also be invisible GIF files that work with cookies to track your ongoing surfing habits, not just report that you visited a page where a particular ad was displayed. What makes Web bugs far worse than cookies isn’t just the fact that you don’t know they are there and your browser can’t be set to block them the way it can block or restrict cookies. Web bugs can also carry an executable that can search for files on your hard drive and forward the contents to someone else on the Web. This capability even extends to Webcam and voice traffic. In a
