A website bug or web beacon is one of the various techniques used to unobtrusively allow checking that a user has accessed some content in the website and email. Web beacons are generally used by third parties to monitor the activity of users for the purpose of web analytics, page activity, or page tagging.

It isn’t unnecessarily a bad thing, however, spammers and hackers may use the same web technology to track user’s activity, obtain confidential information from the website, prevent running of essential website function or program, and help install other malware.

The primary use of website beacon is to gather;

• The IP address of the computer that fetched the web bug.
• The URL of the page that the web bug is located on.
• The URL of the web bug.
• The time the web bug was viewed.
• The type of browser that fetched the web bug.
• A previously set cookie value.

As mentioned above, most website bugs are released to plant malware and/or to gather confidential information from the website.

Tips for Preventing Website Bug

Content proofreading

You can start by proofreading your content. Please ensure that the content is plagiarism free grammatically correct, syntax error-free, and consistent. Remove any invalid HTML codes from the content and avoid using incorrect on-page optimization techniques.

Testing

No single browser renders the website the same. When you fix one format related bug from one browser, it affects another. Your website must function and look the same no matter the brand or version of the web browser. Do care to test your website on Internet Explorer 9, 10, and 11, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Firefox.

Also test your website with handheld devices such as touch-pad, touch phones, and other handheld devices. The overall web browsing experience must be consistent no matter the type of device.

Security

Ensure to provide protection to websites using SSL. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security protocol that encrypts links between a web server and a browser. For instance, an e-commerce site contains sensitive to detail, such as payment information and user information, which requires protection from potential hackers.

Validation

Consider validating the online web forms for security. Web forms are the common means of sending bugs into the website or server. Email phishing and spamming are common ways of intruding any website’s security. Consider adding captcha to prevent spamming.

You should consider validating every internal and external link from a website. A non-functioning link renders a 404 page, which can affect your SEO approach. Along with it, you should consider validating styles and fonts too. Your fonts must have a consistent size and style, and the look of your site must match the original design.

Server security

Malicious users repeatedly attempt to access the server using multiple password combinations. With modern computing system, it is possible to gain entry to a server by automating these attempts. Setting up SSH key authentication allows you to disable password-based authentication.

SSH keys are a pair of cryptographic keys that can be used to authenticate to an SSH server as an alternative to password-based logins.

To safe keep, your website from malware and hackers, consider using the best techniques for designing a website.