Originally Posted by
jsnydcsa
I'm a little ticked that FT uses these trackers in such a way with something as basic as certain simple icons on EVERY FT web page. I understand FT (or any other web site's) need to make money (I actually understand why NY Times charges for web access, they produce a good, you pay for it, how novel - but I digress) to support the site. However, it is a little annoying that that need to generate ad content, make money involves more tracking than advertising itself.
We aren't tracking every icon. All of the images on the forum come from a CDN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network
We do this so that the site is faster for all users, especially for users who are traveling overseas. We do not do this to make money. It actually costs us more money to use a CDN than it otherwise would. Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished.
Many of the things that we deliver through our CDN are hosted on ibsrv.net. If you ever see anything across any IB site coming from x.ibsrv.net, then that asset is coming from our CDN. We use it for a lot of sites and and many different purposes, so it's apparently been blacklisted by some adblocking software.