Hidden tracking request on Daily Mail website

Published: 2009-11-03

When selecting text on the Dail Mail website @CharlotteGore (http://twitter.com/CharlotteGore) noticed a hidden request being sent to a tracking script.  Thought it would be interesting to see exactly what was posted:

 _charset_=UTF-8
trace[guid]=0VnR7ZjQa
trace[url]=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224870/Mother-week-
   old-baby-died-took-bed-drunk-faces-jail.html
trace[site_guid]=bBOTTqvd0r3Pooab7jrHcU
trace[referrer]=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
trace[name]=Mother+whose+six-week-old+baby+died+after+she+took+
   her+to+bed+when+drunk+faces+jail+%7C+Mail+Online
trace[word_count]=26
trace[trace_type]=2
trace[start_node_xpath]=/HTML/BODY[@id='news']/DIV[@id='top']/
   DIV[@id='page-container']/DIV[@id='content']/DIV[2]/DIV/DIV/
   DIV[@id='js-article-text']/P[12]/text()
trace[end_node_xpath]=/HTML/BODY[@id='news']/DIV[@id='top']/
   DIV[@id='page-container']/DIV[@id='content']/DIV[2]/DIV/DIV/
   DIV[@id='js-article-text']/P[12]/text()
trace[start_offset]=null
trace[end_offset]=148
trace[content]=Judge+Stuart+Baker+accepted+Ireland's+plea+
   to+neglect,+and+agreed+it+would+not+be+possible+to+confirm+
   Katie+died+as+a+direct+result+of+that+neglect
trace[first_type]=0

(sent to http://w1.tcr70.tynt.com/traces/)

Interesting to see a company collecting this data, it's the first time I've seen this level of tracking initialised.  You would assume they are also logging your IP alongside this data.

I'm not sure what useful information this could provide, it's certainly not an accurate measurement of who is copying your content (this was an 'on select' action).  Could possibly indicate the origin of any content that goes viral? or maybe just an interesting stat one of the devs fancied?

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