[slober]

Tracking Pixels Getting IP addresses

Tracking Pixels are a danger for your anonymity.
Often used by internet Marketeers for targeting large groups of people this annoying web bug can cause a lot of trouble for other people to.

Let me (Wikipedia) explain this a little further

Web bugs embedded in emails have greater privacy implications than bugs embedded in web pages. Through the use of unique identifiers contained in the URL of the web bugs, the sender of an email containing a web bug is able to record the exact time that a message was read, as well as the IP address of the computer used to read the mail or the proxy server that the user went through. In this way, the sender can gather detailed information about when and where each particular recipient reads email. Every subsequent time the email message is displayed can also send information back to the sender.

Web bugs are used by email marketers, spammers, and phishers to verify that email addresses are valid, that the content of emails has made it past the spam filters, and that the email is actually viewed by users. When the user reads the email, the email client requests the image, letting the sender know that the email address is valid and that the email was viewed. The email need not contain an advertisement or anything else related to the commercial activity of the sender. This makes detection of such emails harder for mail filters and users

As you can see it has great potential for Spammers and marketeers but what does it mean for you and me?

interestingly enough a lot using some php code and you could easily and mostly undetected get someones ip, hostname, agent, reffer link, connected port adress, time clicked, end when embedded in html mails even Java versions and more but keep reading there is more let's start with the code

PHP Code


<?php

  //  1x1 pixel IMAGE CREATING
  $im=imagecreate(1,1);

  // BG color
  $white=imagecolorallocate($im,255,255,255);

  // SET THE COLOR
  imagesetpixel($im,1,1,$white);

  // SET IMAGE TYPE PNG,JPEG,...
  header("content-type:image/jpg");

  // CREATE THE FILE
  imagejpeg($im);

  // Free memory associated with the image
  imagedestroy($im);

 // Get the date and time in a nice format
$date=date('m/d/Y h:i:s a', time());

//transform ip to a nice Hostname
$hostname = gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);

//indicates the start
$ip0 = "------START------\r\n";

//gets the ip 
$ip1 = "IP:".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."\r\n";

//the earlier found hostname put in a nice formatted string like the rest
$ip2= "HOSTNAME:".$hostname."\r\n";

//from where did he click
$ip3 = "REFFER:".$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']."\r\n";

//getting his browser version OS,...
$ip4 = "USER AGENT:".$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']."\r\n";

//the earliere formatted date putted in a nice format
$ip5 = "TIME:".$date."\r\n";

//if used the HTML version add java version
$ip6= "JAVA VERSION:".implode(",", $_POST["javavers"])."\r\n";

//get his port (this is the port he uses to connect to the site between 50k and 65k)
$ip7 = "PORT:".$_SERVER['REMOTE_PORT']."\r\n";

//end of the log
$ip9 = "------END------\r\n";

//adds everything to 1 variable 
$ip= $ip0 . $ip1 . $ip2 . $ip3 . $ip4 . $ip5 . $ip6 . $ip7 . $ip8 . $ip9 ;

//file name to put it in this can also be done using SQL
//$logFile = 'logs.txt';

//command for opening the logfile
$fO = fopen('logs.txt' , 'a');

//write everything into the earlier mentioned file and with the earlier specified Variable 
fwrite($fO, $ip);

//close the file ^^
fclose($fO);
?>

I commented every line ^-^, Please upload this code to a Hosting provider after you done this make an empty file called logs.txt (777 rights) and you're done now you can use your own tracking pixel 🙂

output

Code

------START------
IP:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
HOSTNAME:xxxxxx
REFFER:http://xxxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx/xxxxxx
USER AGENT:xxxxxx
TIME:xxxxxx
JAVA VERSION:xxxxxx
PORT:xxxxxx
------END------

Using it in collaboration with a HTML script.

Code

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://java.com/js/deployJava.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
var javavers = deployJava.getJREs();

    $('#content').click(function(e) {  
$.post( "xxxx", { javavers : javavers},  function() {
  alert( "success" );
})
    });
});
</script>

O wait I almost forgot to tell you to use this
this is the scary part the truth is you can use it everywhere forums blogs mails.
everywhere you could embed an image

Code

[img]SITE[/img]
<img src="SITE">

personal note:
Tracking pixels are a pest and easy to use when i'm saying everywhere i mean everywhere i'm shocked i didn't encountered them here that's why you should always be cautious stay safe 🙂