<p>I happened to send a note to my alma mater to congratulate them on some cute website animation and to tell them that one viewer had some difficulty seeing all of it. Long story short, I got a very nice email back, and happened to notice that their email to me shows the last screen on their website that I viewed! I know that the schools track contact and communication, but I didn't know they tracked which pages on their site we viewed! That's a little mind boggling! Technology has really come a long way, but it makes me now conscious of what I look at on the sites (not that there'd be anything weird to look at , but still). It just hit me funny. Anyone know about this, or have any info on the specifics of the tracking software of the colleges?</p>
<p>jym, you've most likely gotten the e-mail back from the site's webmaster, not from the school. Webmasters do keep track of what pages are viewed; they're called "cookies", and they're logged by your IP address. They do this to try to keep improving their site; they don't want to waste time with pages no one looks at. </p>
<p>I don't think that the college has anything to do with it. And I don't think they use it to track "interest."</p>
<p>Thanks, Chedva. I am aware of "cookies". The response I got back, and the chat I had, was with the "Director of Web Development;
Office of College Relations" at the college (with a college email address). I don't believe it was an outside webmaster. I contacted the school, not the webmaster address. I could be wrong, but its a pretty small school. I am pretty certain I was communicating with College staff, not an outside site webmaster. I think it is clever to track what parts of the website people view- I'd just not looked at it from that perspective.</p>
<p>If it's a small school, the Director of Web Development may be either the webmaster or the supervisor of the webmaster. Webmasters don't need to be external to an organization. </p>
<p>When I said "college", I should have said "admissions or alumni office". Sorry for the confused post! I still don't think that they keep that information to track individuals, but only web traffic.</p>
<p>Understood. I still found it "spooky" (pun intended- it was on Halloween!)</p>
<p>I have heard of that before. I think the info is used more often then we may think. This would be a way for schools to view how much interst a person may have in their school. My son often goes to web sites and will just click enough to find out how many students are enrolled. When he finds out it's a small school, he's done looking at the web site.</p>
<p>So take ten minutes on the website of each school you're interested in. What the h . . . .</p>
<p>and you may even get a packet of info in the mail. It happened to us.</p>
<p>On this thread, I see something I've never noticed before: After each Post Number, it says (permalink). What does that mean?</p>
<p>i think maybe its some kind of glitch. cc seems to be acting up today.,</p>
<p>Now that I noticed it here, I noticed it on other threads as well.</p>
<p>yes, it seems to be happening everywhere.</p>
<p>also, the thread urls have changed, for some reason. it used to be all numbers, but now there are words. this thread url is:</p>
<p>parents-forum/412073-interesting-twist-college-websites-tracking-us.html</p>