Bot to follow user around

[taekwondokid42]

I'm looking to create a bot that will follow a user around and record things such as websites visited, searches made, online purchases made, ect.

I believe that the type of bot that can do this is tracking cookies. Am I right?

Is this stuff legal?

My intent is not malicious. I'm basically looking for which types of ads to broadcast to a user.



Provided that it is legal (and is okay with x10) I would like to know what type of code I need to create these bots. I have done numerous internet searches, but all I find are ways to rid myself of the cookies.

I'll give out credit if you can provide a sufficient answer.


Reputation as well will be handed out.

[leafypiggy]

Well. If there are only ways to get RID OF THEM... They PROBABLY AREN'T GOOD FOR YOUR PC!

They are malicious software that can keylog and do other things.

[Scoochi2]

In short, the only people that would agree to this are the people getting paid to do this. And the advertisers.

Ask the end users for permissions to keep anything like this on their computer and the answer will be a big fat no. As leafypiggy said, if there are so many people showing how to get rid of them, then there's a very good market for getting rid of them. And as you yourself pointed out, not a very good market for getting them in the first place...

[taekwondokid42]

Certain forms of these are already used by advertisers. And, depending on the intention, they are not all bad. I don't know how much they hit the performance on your computer, but I know that dozens of very popular advertiser implement them.

As for the key logging, precautions would be taken to be sure that no credit-card numbers, phone numbers, pin numbers, passwords, addresses, or other important private information would be stored into the DB.

If the cookies do greatly impact the performance of the computer, I will either keep them to a minimum or not use them at all. But I'm not even sure the type of bot I'm looking for is a tracking cookie.

If someone could point me to a place where I can learn more about them and how to implement them into my website, I would be appreciative.

Don't worry, I am a freak about keeping my computer clean. If I run across something that I wouldn't want on my own computer, I won't put on other computers.

I would like to ask you not to post unless you can give me good information, or can point me to a website giving good information.

Once again, there are credits involved.

[mattura]

You can't really do it without installing some logging program/virus on the host machine...
You can use cookies to track users visiting your website, but not others.

Basically there is not a good way to do this without some serious privacy concerns (eg tracking credit card details), so who would agree to installing any kind of tracker that might have the ability to do that, and then send you the results?!!