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It may be a bit unnerving, but it really is harmless. the site that does it doesn't save the info, it just echoes it back to your screen in the picture that is generated on the fly...
what you should be worried about is someone setting up the same thing with a static picture (same for everyone) but in the background recording all the available data. check out that sites webpage, there are a lot more bits of info that they can access when you DL a "picture" from their website. any website can do this as ir runs on the server which can access a database if it has set one up.
other versions include some sites that provide counters. the placees that say "there have been ##### visitors since June 31st,2005" could just be incrimenting a counter for every hit but sites that diferentiate between hits and unique hits either need to place a cookie on your computer (which isn't accurate because if you delete the cookie then the next time there it will place another cookie and think it has a new computer) or they need to save you in a database. the easiest way is to record your ip address but that also is falable if you are dialup it changes every time. so the only sure way is to save your computer id which is why Microsoft and Intel ran into such a mess when they tried to impliment it autlmatically
long story short:
don't fret about the ones that say "YOO HOO, look at me!" worry about the stealth ones
and to stop it tell your browser to never DL pictures in internet explorer it is TOOLS>"internet options">"advanced>multimedia (chose checkboxes to undo)
qazwiz is qazwiz everywhere. If you see me say HI!
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