mysterious html comment in every Amazon.com's webpage
Elliott Back noticed
that there's a comment in the footer of every Amazon.com web page, that
changes on page reload. So what, you might say? Well, we geeks like
mysteries, I speculate a lot; and Amazon.com is leading edge in
ecommerce. There's always a reason for everything, and it sure isn't
pagerank; like this poor bastard tried. Therefore let's start betting:
<!-- whfh-cCJ7a+ry5+2rF8swizih4ZZ9Ek1D+eBk rid-0643ZG9BYR0MDM0MKRXF -->
<!-- whfh-bNnLuavalux6UScrxGVjgqV4e6J5iGti rid-0D80HYA0YNWGYVFH6CZR -->
<!-- whfh-zPubYgSp2Y5EuAo6YcBDSB0ugSKOnRy7 rid-1A6V41J0H11H7YC919X5 -->
and in the shorter form in all other pages. So what does a radio station id near a md5 like signature do? And what is rid? Anyone?
- it's another fancy google-like job opening contest
- a new way to digital sign or fingerprint a webpage
- some internal stuff, and we don't care. it gets boring; click the back button now!
- if it's a fingerprint, it could be read by alexa toolbar, and they match alexa's user patterns towards their own click streams
- since they force the page refresh on every load, they clearly don't play with the HTTP header code 304.
- it's simply a HTML comment; no fuss about it
<!-- whfh-cCJ7a+ry5+2rF8swizih4ZZ9Ek1D+eBk rid-0643ZG9BYR0MDM0MKRXF -->
<!-- whfh-bNnLuavalux6UScrxGVjgqV4e6J5iGti rid-0D80HYA0YNWGYVFH6CZR -->
<!-- whfh-zPubYgSp2Y5EuAo6YcBDSB0ugSKOnRy7 rid-1A6V41J0H11H7YC919X5 -->
and in the shorter form in all other pages. So what does a radio station id near a md5 like signature do? And what is rid? Anyone?
