Alexa Toolbar

Risks

Privacy Issues:

"ALEXA'S TOOLBAR SERVICE COLLECTS AND STORES INFORMATION ABOUT THE WEB PAGES YOU VIEW, THE DATA YOU ENTER IN ONLINE FORMS AND SEARCH FIELDS, AND, WITH VERSIONS 5.0 AND HIGHER, THE PRODUCTS YOU PURCHASE ONLINE WHILE USING THE TOOLBAR SERVICE. ALTHOUGH ALEXA DOES NOT ATTEMPT TO ANALYZE WEB USAGE DATA TO DETERMINE THE IDENTITY OF ANY ALEXA USER, SOME INFORMATION COLLECTED BY THE TOOLBAR SERVICE IS PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE. ALEXA AGGREGATES AND ANALYZES THE INFORMATION IT COLLECTS TO IMPROVE ITS SERVICE AND TO PREPARE REPORTS ABOUT AGGREGATE WEB USAGE AND SHOPPING HABITS.

"IN ADDITION, WHEN YOU PERFORM SEARCHES USING THE SEARCH FUNCTION AVAILABLE ON ALEXA'S TOOLBAR SERVICE SOFTWARE VERSION 6.5 AND HIGHER OR ON THE ALEXA WEBSITE, YOU OFTEN WILL BE TAKEN TO A WEBSITE DETAIL PAGE AT AMAZON.COM. IF YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT ON AMAZON.COM AND AN AMAZON.COM COOKIE ENABLED, YOUR SEARCH RESULTS WILL BE TRANSMITTED TO AND LOGGED BY AMAZON.COM AND MAY BE CORRELATED BY AMAZON.COM WITH ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION YOU MAY HAVE PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED TO AMAZON.COM.

"If you are visiting the Alexa website (alexa.com), we collect the following information: the full Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") of the Web page from which you came to alexa.com; your Internet Protocol ("IP") address, which may include a domain name; the date and time for each page you view; the name of and information about any advertisement that brought you to the Alexa website; searches you perform, links you click on; and computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform. We also transmit cookies to your computer so we can track the pages of our website that you view and the order in which you view them.

"If you use the E-mail This Site feature, we collect your message, the recipient e-mail address(es), and your e-mail address for the purpose of sending the e-mail. We do not send other e-mail to these address(es). If you choose, we can save your e-mail address in a cookie on your computer to make this feature easier to use.

"If you download and install the Toolbar Service software, which provides the Alexa toolbar, we collect any information voluntarily provided by you during the installation and registration process, which can include your e-mail address as well as demographic information such as gender, age, occupation, household income, zip code and country. We also collect the name of and information about any advertisement that brought you to the Alexa download. Any e-mail address that you give us during the installation process is kept separate from information collected during your use of the Toolbar Service and is not used to correlate your identity to Web usage path or shopping information. Demographic information is correlated to Web usage and shopping information collected during your use of the Toolbar Service, but we do not attempt to determine your identity by analyzing this information.

"When you download the software, and at times during your use of the Alexa website and Toolbar Service, we transmit Alexa cookies to the hard drive of your computer. These cookies assign your Web browser a unique series of numbers, letters, or characters that enable Alexa's servers to recognize and identify your Web browser when you are using the Toolbar Service. They also enable Alexa to track and store information about your Web usage path and online shopping while using the Toolbar Service. See below for more information about how Alexa uses this data.

"When you use the Toolbar Service, we collect information about the websites you visit, the searches you perform when you use the "search" function, and the pages you view. This information allows us to provide you with information about the Web page you are viewing (Alexa's Site Info) and to build our database of information about related Web pages (Alexa's Related Links). Thus, for every Web page you view while using the Toolbar Service, the Alexa software transmits and stores the following information from your computer to Alexa:

Your IP address, which may include a domain name.
The full URL of the Web page you are visiting.
General information about your browser.
General information about your computer's operating system.
Your Alexa cookie number.
The date and time the above information is logged.
All of the above information is logged together in a single data string for each Web page you visit. Each string is logged in our database in the chronological order received from our hundreds of thousands of users.

"If you use Internet Explorer's Related Links feature, we collect the full URL of the Web page for which you requested the Related Links information; your IP address, which may include a domain name; the date and time of your request; and computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform. This information is stored in the same logs as the usage paths. We do not transmit cookies to your computer when you use this Internet Explorer feature. If you use Netscape's What's Related feature, we receive from Netscape the URL of the Web page for which you requested the related links information with the information that appears after the "?" stripped out; your IP address, which may include a domain name; the date and time of your request; and computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform. We do not transmit cookies to your computer when you use this Netscape feature.

"Does Alexa collect personally identifiable information?

"The URLs we collect through the Toolbar Service sometimes contain personal information about you. For example, when you enter information on a Web page (e.g., when you complete an online registration form or sign up for a contest), the operator of the website may insert that information into its URLfor that or the next page. This information often appears after a question mark ("?") in the URL, although it can appear in other places. This means that your name, your address, your e-mail address, or similar information you might consider private or personally identifiable which you enter into a Web page sometimes becomes part of a URLthat is then transmitted to Alexa and automatically stored in Alexa's databases. This can also occur with words, topics, products, or phrases you enter into search engines – whether those engines are provided by the Alexa Toolbar Service itself or found elsewhere on the Web – while using the Alexa Toolbar Service. Alexa has no control over what information third party websites put into their URLs or where they put it, but any information in each URL is collected and stored by Alexa when you are using the Toolbar Service.

"If you use version 5.0 or higher of the Toolbar Servicesoftware, as part of the shopping feature of the Toolbar Service, we collect information about the products you view or search for on the World Wide Web. This allows us to provide more detailed product and comparative shopping information. The information we collect includes product codes (such as ISBN numbers for books), product names, and other identifiers that appear in both the text and the URLs of Web pages that you view. The product information that Alexa gathers is logged together with your IP address, Alexa cookie number, the names of Alexa's business partners that might have additional information about the particular product, and the date and time, in a single data string for each Web page you visit. These strings, which we call "shopping paths," may also contain personally identifiable information. Alexa transmits the product descriptions (without your Alexa cookie number or IP address) to its business partners, who return relevant product information and/or comparison shopping information to the Toolbar Service for your use.

"Also for users of version 5 of the Toolbar Service, the shopping feature of the Alexa Toolbar Servicesoftware provides comparative shopping information from Amazon.com and enables you to purchase items with Amazon.com's 1-Click feature or place items in your Amazon.com shopping cart. To do this, Alexa reads any Amazon.com cookies stored on your Web browser and transmits them to Amazon.com (but not to any other party) along with the product information described above. If you are not an Amazon.com customer already, Alexa will transmit new Amazon.com cookies to enable the Amazon.com shopping features of the Toolbar Service. When you make a purchase or place items in your Amazon.com shopping cart using the buttons provided by the Alexa Toolbar Service, Alexa logs the fact that you selected the button and the product for which you selected it. Alexa does not receive any information from Amazon.com about your existing Amazon.com account or other Amazon.com purchases that you make when not using the Alexa Toolbar Service.

"Alexa analyzes its logs of usage path, shopping path, and purchase information collected from users to determine Web usage and shopping patterns of users in the aggregate. Further, by storing this information with users' Alexa cookie numbers, Alexa correlates each user's usage path information, shopping path information, Amazon.com purchase information, and demographic information to each other.

"If you e-mail Alexa, we may store copies of such e-mail or similar communications between you and Alexa. This can result in the collection of your e-mail address or other personally identifiable information you may have in your e-mail text, addresses, or other fields, as well as the collection of the your IP address, the Internet or other routing of your communication, and the date and time of your communication. We do not attempt to correlate this information to your Alexa cookie number or your usage and shopping paths unless responding to your inquiry requires us to do so.

"Although these information logs may contain personally identifiable information, Alexa does not attempt to correlate cookie numbers, usage paths, shopping paths, Amazon.com purchases, or demographic information to your e-mail address and does not attempt to determine the identity of any Alexa user by analyzing this information, except as required by subpoenas, court orders or legal requirements.

"If you write a Review on the Alexa website, the content you submit on the Review form, the URL that you reviewed, your chosen public nickname, the date of the Review, your Alexa cookie number, and a record locator number may be logged together by Alexa. If you choose to rate a website or recommend the addition of a website as a Related Link, your e-mail addresses and recommendation and rating are logged together by Alexa.

"All transmissions between you and Alexa, including e-mails, URLs, cookie identification numbers, usage paths, shopping path information, Amazon.com purchase information, and any personally identifiable information they might contain, pass through many third party machines, operating systems, programs, browsers, Web servers, networks, routers, Ethernet switches, ISPs, proxy servers, intranets, the public telephone systems, or other devices, any of which may create activity logs containing such transmissions.

"What does Alexa do with the information it collects?

"If you gave us your e-mail address when you registered, we use it to send you Alexa newsletters, product updates, service-related information, and other offers and information from Alexa or its business partners. Alexa also may contact you by e-mail to respond to reviews, ratings, and customer service inquiries you submit. We do not disclose your e-mail address to business partners or to anyone other than employees and agents working for or on behalf of Alexa, except as required by subpoenas, court orders, or legal requirements. We do not use your e-mail address to correlate your identity to your Web usage paths, shopping path information, or Amazon.com purchase information. If you have given us your e-mail address but wish to unsubscribe at any time, please see our section regarding changing your information for instructions on how to do so.

"We use Alexa cookies for such functions as verifying that you are an Alexa user, counting and tracking your Alexa website visits, setting the appearance of the toolbar, helping the toolbar remember which module and tab you were last on and which search feature you used last, remembering the default search engine that you used in our Web search feature, determining the length of time you spent on a Web page, and keeping the nickname you used when you wrote your last Web review. We further use cookies to determine the number of visitors that came to the Alexa website through a particular advertisement. Your Alexa cookie number is also used to create usage and shopping paths and to correlate those with any demographic information you provide, but we do not use your cookies, usage paths, shopping paths, or product purchasing information to attempt to determine your identity. If you have The Web You Made feature turned on, your cookie also contains information about the last several websites that you visited.

"We use IP addresses to diagnose problems with our servers and to administer our website. Your IP address also is used by Alexa to gather broad demographic information, such as your general geographic location and Internet Service Provider. IP addresses are further used to help determine the number of Alexa users. This demographic information may also be used by Alexa to analyze aggregate Web usage behavior.

"We use Web usage paths to build the Related Links functionality. We use shopping paths to build the functionality of our product information and comparison shopping features. We use both usage and shopping paths and Amazon.com purchase information for aggregate research and reports described below.

"How does Alexa share the information it collects?

"User privacy has always been a core value of Alexa. That is why Alexa does not attempt to determine the identity of its users or correlate their e-mail addresses with their Web usage paths or shopping information. Except as described below, Alexa does not intentionally disclose personally identifying information collected from any user to any third party-including Amazon.com-without the user's consent.

"We provide "stripped" usage path information, demographic information, and shopping path information to Amazon.com, researchers, and other third parties. They use it to prepare analyses of aggregate Web patterns and trends. Such analyses are used in research and commercial reports. Before providing the usage path information, we "strip" from the URLs a portion of your IP address and the information that appears after the "?," with limited exceptions for certain types of search terms, leading "search engine" websites, and many e-commerce websites. Before providing the shopping path information to any third party, we strip a portion of your IP address from the data string.

"Although this process effectively eliminates most, but not all, personally identifiable information collected during use of the Toolbar Service, we require Amazon.com and other third parties to abide by our practice of not attempting to use such information to determine users' identities.

"We also provide the stripped usage path information to the nonprofit Internet Archive (www.archive.org), which is building a "library" of the Web.

"If you use the search functions provided on either the Alexa website or on versions 6.5 and higher of the Toolbar Service software, we transmit your search term and IP address to the search engine you chose.

"When you click on a search result, you often will be sent to a website detail page at Amazon.com. Alexa transmits your search result, which includes your original search term, the result of the search as displayed on our website, and the URLs of the page found by the search to Amazon.com, who uses that information to personalize that detail page. If you have an account on Amazon.com and you have an Amazon.com cookie enabled, your search result will be logged by Amazon.com's servers and may be correlated by Amazon.com with personally identifiable information that you have provided to Amazon.com. Alexa does not receive any personally identifiable information about you from Amazon.com.

"As noted above, with versions 5.0 and higher of the Toolbar Service software, Alexa transmits product descriptions of the products you view while using the Toolbar Service (without your Alexa cookie number or IP address) to its business partners, who return relevant product information and/or comparison shopping information to the Toolbar Service for your use. Further, to enable the Amazon.com 1-Click and shopping cart features to work on the Alexa Toolbar Service, Alexa reads and transmits Amazon.com cookies to and from your computer and Amazon.com. Alexa does not use the Amazon.com cookies to attempt to determine your identity, and Alexa does not receive any other information about your Amazon.com account or any purchases you make while not using the Alexa Toolbar Service.

"If you write a Review on the Alexa website, the content you submit on the Review form, the URL that you reviewed, and your chosen public nickname often are transmitted to Amazon.com and logged by Amazon.com." - Alexa privacy policy

reports from users:

Alexa is sent my full home address when I did a Yellow page look-up at AltaVista:

GET /urlplus/=?live.av.com/scripts/search.dll?ep=7&gca=address&
orderby=distance&sstreet=172+mason+terr&scity=brookline&sstate=MA&
szip=02446&scountry=USA&query=furniture&qname=&sic=&ck=&
ccity=brookline&cstate=MA HTTP/1.0

Alexa gets the name of my Hotmail Email account:

GET /urlplus/=?lw3fd.law3.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?WCID=hmletterIN&
disk=209.185.240.65_d573&login=avhunt&f=33792&curmbox=ACTIVE&_lang=&
msg=MSG945396515.110&src=k.law3.hotmail.com:/home/d1/surveys/
hmletterIN.991214:5965&type=f HTTP/1.0

Here is what my packet sniffer saw being sent back to a Alexa server when I visited the AltaVista page:

GET /data?cli=10&dat=snbamz&url=live.av.com/scripts/search.dll
%3Fep%3D7%26gca%3Daddress%26orderby%3Ddistance%26sstreet%3D
172+mason+terr%26scity%3Dbrookline%26sstate%3DMA%26
szip%3D02446%26scountry%3DUSA%26query%3Dfurniture%26qname
%3D%26sic%3D%26ck%3D%26userid%3D161421220%26userpw%3D.
%26uh%3D161421220%2C0%2C%26ccity%3Dbrookline%26cstate%3DMA
HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)
Host: data.alexa.com
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive crunch!
Cookie: aid=FKbUlpTAUbKfM2

Alexa watches as we purchase a plane ticket from Boston to Vegas:

GET /urlplus/=?dps1.travelocity.com/airgrules.ctl?dep_arp_code=BOS&arr_arp_code=LAS&
dep_dt=20000106&fare_bss_cd=WSE0HOLN&aln_code=HP&eqp_name=&
flt_num=68&SEQ=946248145055738&last_pgd_page=airgprice.pgd HTTP/1.0
GET /urlplus/=?dps1.travelocity.com/retrcobrand.ctl?Service=YHOE&
smls=Y&y=hci_f70hb0f/o&data=c2h%2bY0pOTjcxNTM1NTU1MzFOMSFzaHdjSkYwN1Y3Q25G&S
EQ=25 HTTP/1.0
GET /urlplus/=?dps1.travelocity.com/glblreview.ctl?res_loc=RANJWD&
previous_page=retrrqst&SEQ=946248207742456&last_pgd_page=retrrqst.pgd
HTTP/1.0

Privacy Policy:

Security Issues:

Stability Issues:

Detection and Removal

Automatic Removal:

PestPatrol detects this.

PestPatrol removes this.

Manual Removal:

All versions of the Alexa Toolbar have an uninstall feature. It will be located in different places, depending on which version you have installed.

To uninstall Alexa Toolbar 6, click on the small down arrow by the Alexa logo on the toolbar and select Uninstall Alexa from the drop down menu.

To uninstall Alexa Toolbar 5, click on the round ‘?’ button on the Alexa toolbar and select Uninstall Alexa from the drop down menu.

To uninstall Alexa Toolbar 4, open the Alexa sidebar, click on Help, and select Uninstall Alexa.

Alexa Toolbars 4, 5, and 6 may also be uninstalled using your computer’s Add/Remove Programs feature. Open your Windows Start menu, go to Settings, click on Control Panel, and then double click on Add/Remove Programs. Click on Alexa and then click the remove button. The next time you open a new browser window, the toolbar should be gone.

If you have trouble uninstalling Alexa Toolbars 4, 5, or 6 using these methods, please take a moment to try our alternate method at http://www.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=38 to uninstall the toolbar.

To uninstall Alexa Toolbar 1.4.1 (the version for Netscape Navigator), click on Start > Programs > Alexa > Uninstall. Then follow the on-screen steps.

To remove the Alexa Snapshot link from your links bar, simply delete it.

If you have questions or need help while uninstalling, you can e-mail customerservice@alexa.com.

Research

File Analyses:

• Alexa Toolbar: alexa toolbar.txt ·  alexa.htm ·  alexa.txt ·  alexa6.inf ·  alxbp328.dll ·  alxie328.dll ·  alxres.dll ·  alxtb.dll ·  alxtb1.dll ·  uninstall.exe

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