Last night I left a Telegraph.co.uk page open in my browser, planning to read it this morning.

While debugging something else, I noticed this steady stream of requests went all night:

http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986677000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-The_Good_Shepherd
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986680000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Toronto
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986683000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Convergence_Special
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986686000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Oracle
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986689000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Bernard_Cornwell
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986692000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-The_Good_Shepherd
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986695000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Experience_Australi
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986698000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Share_Centre
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986701000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Bernard_Cornwell
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986704000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Stannah
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986707000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Toronto
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986710000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Share_Centre
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986713000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Sophisticated_Inves
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986716000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Oracle
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986719000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-RBS_Six_Nations_Par
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986722000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Toronto
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986725000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-RBS_Six_Nations_Par
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986728000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-The_Good_Shepherd
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986731000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Business_Growth
http://ai.hitbox.com/ai?random=1172986734000&hb=DM550808OANC78EN3&dai=OTC-ffoc-Oracle

These ai.hitbox.com URLs are being loaded every couple of seconds for as long as I keep the Telegraph page open. Glancing at the source reveals the offending code:

var ffocus1 = new RandomSlideShow('ff1img', 'ff1lnk');
ffocus1.loadXMLFile('featurefocuslinks.xml');
ffocus1.setDelay(3000);
ffocus1.setCampaignString('OTC-');
ffocus1.setTrackingName('ffoc');
ffocus1.setHitboxAccount('tel');

I guess it's connected somehow with the little slideshow. There are so many things wrong with doing this- people who have internet on demand, people who leave their webpage over night, and my particular concern this morning- trying to get Firefox to unload from memory when minimized (hard to do with constant network activity).

I notice that up at the top the Telegraph proudly proclaims it was the number one hitwise website for Oct-Dec 2006... gee, could it be counting each of these rotates as a hit?

Anyway, adblocking http://ai.hitbox.com/* does the trick. Very lame though.

Today's photographic nomination is in People:

previous entry: