More than 30 percent of Web pages sampled during last year's Christmas season contained new generations of Web bugs that the advertising industry is using to secretly track online surfers, privacy advocates say.

Richard Smith, chief technology officer at the University of Denver's Privacy Foundation, said the use of sophisticated Web bug tracking devices "has grown dramatically" over the past year.

He used a search engine and identified 4 million Web bugs planted by 30 vendors.

Smith said he even has found that bugs are planted by the Boston bank he uses for online banking, and on a hotel site offering Internet room booking services. He said many companies aren't disclosing their use of bugs in their privacy policies, and at least one Web bug version he uncovered searches a user's computer while they are looking at the site.

"Computer User" - News: Online privacy breaches common, Canadian survey says.

A survey of Internet-using Canadians has found that about 18 percent of those who have submitted some kind of personal data at a Web site believe that information was used in ways they considered a breach of their privacy.

The Columbus Group/Ipsos Reid survey, summarized in a report released last Thursday, said that a hefty 82 percent of Canadian Internet users say they have shared some personally identifiable information at a Web site. Of the 18 percent of those who felt that confidence was abused, 86 percent said they were subscribed to unwanted e-mail marketing and 43 percent said their data was "sold or transferred" to a third party, the report said.