Stackoverflow Snooping?

For a while now, I’ve had trouble with the technical answer site stackoverflow.com. This same trouble has been documented here:

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/74796/failed-to-load-source-for-http-stackoverflow-com-posts-1234567-ivc-3c10

The answer that Jeff Atwood (founder of StackOverflow?) gives is:

That link returns a 204 no content by design, so I suspect your work firewall is configured incorrectly.

The obvious question is, “Why is that by design?” Or, “What is the design goal here?”

Tim Stone comments,

Note: You’re supposed to be getting a 204 No Content response, it’s just a dummy request for the view counter mechanism.

Should this bother me? Probably not. I understand that StackOverflow rates its questions by how many views are made of them. This “view counter mechanism” is an integral part of StackOverflow.

And yet…it does bother me. I’m not concerned about privacy, since I don’t browse the bad parts of the web and I don’t go looking for trouble. But this feels like a “web beacon” from the long-lost days of the Mozilla Web Browser. I don’t want to be counted, which is one reason I haven’t signed up for a StackOverflow account.

I’ve found a way around this, but I don’t want to post it online. They guys at StackOverflow really like their counting mechanism, so let’s let them keep it. If you feel bothered by the counter, though, let me know by posting a comment and I’ll share what I’ve found out with you, via email. Just don’t go posting it on the Internet, OK? 🙂