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“Tracking is Hacking” says Penny Mellor. According to self-proclaimed “high profile campaigner” Penny Mellor, webmasters who track visitor activity through their website logs are “hacking”. All webmasters appreciate the value of their website logs. These automatically generated records contain a wealth of information about each visit; what page the visitor came from, their IP address, what web browser, screen resolution and operation system they are using, and more besides. One log record is generated each time a visitor requests a single page, image or other document from the site. So, by putting together the records for a single day, for example, the webmaster can get a pretty good idea of which pages each visitor viewed, how they arrived at their site, how long they stayed and what route they took around the site. Repeating the analysis over a few weeks or months can throw up even more useful information, such as how often a given visitor returns to the site. Add that to the information about each visit, and you gain a fairly clear impression of that visitor’s surfing habits. To webmasters, who habitually keep a close eye on their logs, this is old, old news – logs, and the information they yield, are just basic tools of their job. To others, the idea that every move they make on a website or blog is recorded may come as a shock – especially if the purpose of their visit may have been less than friendly. Recently, NHS Exposed has been playing frequent host to a small group of individuals who fall squarely into that category. When, after several months of observing and recording this group’s visits, we revealed some of the information we had obtained or deduced from our logs, the result was amazing. “You’ve been hacking us,” they screamed. Apparently, the idea that they send information to us (and all websites they visit) – including, for example, the version of Windows that they’re using – every time they view a page from the site or the blog is totally unacceptable. Or, at least, is beyond this group’s comprehension. On the 9th September 2007, in a message posted to the MAMA board at msbp.com, Penny Mellor, one of the group’s ringleaders, said, “PS sort of related - tracking is hacking - the police tend to take me quite seriously these days, given the quality of evidence I have provided.” Tracking is hacking? So, every webmaster who monitors traffic on their websites is a hacker? That’s a pretty big slur on the thousands, if not millions, of webmasters who know every move that’s made on their sites. And, more importantly, it’s just plain wrong. What we have here is a practical demonstration of Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Of course, in this case, the technology in question doesn’t have to be all that advanced – just about anything they don’t understand is enough to generate yet another conspiracy theory, to which they will cling with grim determination no matter how implausible it is shown to be. This trait was noted by His Honour Mr Justice Whitburn QC, when, on the 21st March 2002, he passed sentence on Penny Mellor for her part in a “wicked conspiracy to abduct” a child in February 1999. He said, “Impervious to debate, convinced that you are right, you have traduced, complained about and harried dedicated professional people working in this difficult area.” Yes, we see what he means. Penny Mellor has already tried to complain to our domain name registrar (Tucows Inc) about the contents of a blog hosted on Blogger, and complained to the General Medical Council because our editor, Dr Rita Pal, linked a blog posting to a document already in the public domain and hosted on another blog, owned by somebody else entirely (see The Register for more details). And now she thinks that monitoring our own logs amounts to hacking. This is the same Penny Mellor – housewife, mother of eight, no medical or legal training, self-styled “child advocate” – who thinks she is qualified to judge and criticise the professional abilities and behaviour of senior paediatricians, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses and others. If that seems like a tall order for someone who’s struggling to grasp the basics of website logs, or which company she should complain to about a Blogger-based blog, we agree. Fortunately, Mellor has recruited some helpers in her crusade – an ex-carpet fitter, and an aging freelance journalist who suddenly stopped posting unpleasant comments to our blog when he found out we were logging visits. An awe-inspiring combo, isn’t it? If the “quality of evidence” Mellor has provided in her relentless campaign against Professor Southall and many other medical professionals is of the same calibre as that which leads her to believe that monitoring website logs amounts to “hacking”, we don’t think Southall et al have much to worry about. In the meantime, if Mellor and her buddies don’t want to leave their footprints in our logs, we suggest they go and play on someone else’s websites. James Landon.
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