Web bugs are typically used by third parties to monitor the activity of customers at a site. Originally, a web bug was a small (usually 1×1 pixel) transparent GIF or PNG image (or an image of the same color of the background) that was embedded in an HTML page, usually a page on the web or the content of an e-mail. Modern web bugs also use the HTML IFrame, style, script, input link, embed, object, and other tags to track usage. Whenever the user opens the page with a graphical browser, the image or other information is downloaded. This download requires the browser to request the image from the server storing it, allowing the server to take notice of the download. As a result, the organization running the server is informed when the HTML page has been viewed.
In short : web bugs are eating your bandwidth and they invade your privacy. Why would you want them ?
With Ghostery it's easy to get ride of them. Download the Firefox Add-On it will install, and after restarting Firefox all trackers and web bugs will be removed.
You will see all the objects removed on each page and you can of course easily enable or disable Ghostery.
On the New York Times main page, Ghostery removes 3 web bugs and it's 25kB less to download.
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