Slashdot Mirror
Marketers Back "Cookies Are Good For You" Campaign
Makarand writes "The increasing numbers of computer users
who regularly delete cookies downloaded by
their browsers is
worrying online marketers and Web
site publishers who feel that the changing
consumer attitude towards cookies is harming
cookie usefulness and unfairly lumping them
with spyware and viruses. This industry group
wants to persuade companies making antispyware programs
to spare legitimate cookies while sweeping hard drives clean
of unnecessary or harmful files.
Some marketers think that providing consumers more information about cookies and how they're used
might change their attitudes towards cookies.
Others are already busy experimenting with newer approaches to serve up targeted ads even if a user has deleted his cookies."
Brainlessly agreeing with what marketers say without seeking out more information is bad for you.
Not that I'm against cookies, I'm just against stupidity.
after Dr. Atkins told me I'd get more girlz if I quit eating them.
That's what my mom used to say... wait... no..
Well, if you can "serve up targeted ads even if a user has deleted his cookies," then the whole cookie thing is pretty much moot. You don't even need the cookies in the first place.
C is for cookie, it's good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with C.
I wonder if I'm one of the people worrying them. I have cookies off by default, and only turn them on for sites that really need them by whitelisting.
Those that I don't want to use a cookie for but have to, I allow to set one but only for the session.
Firefox has been helpful in this, but I would like an easier method of whitelisting cookies than having to go through two layers of preference panels. And no, having it ask me every time a site wants to set a cookie is not the solution.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
I hate Hollywood. They like to spout of on things they know nothing about. Take this high profile individual who granted an interview to the BBC to say that cookies are bad !
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
If I look through my cookies I see nothing but marketing companies as the origins and I have Firefox set to nuke them all at the end of each session. (All sites work properly that way, but I'm fairly hard to track.)
Cookies are a tool like any other, and can be used for a variety of purposes. They can track your slashdot login and another can follow your shopping habits.
While I wouldn't go so far as to say, as the article claims online marketers do, that cookies "don't deserve their bad reputation", it's true that they aren't inherently malicious. With the word "cookies" being seen increasingly often alongside "virii" and "spyware", it's no surprise that they aren't the most popular components of the internet.
Frankly, I'm surprised an initiative like this one is so late in coming.
-- arstchnca
--
gets a chocolate chip cookie
sits back at computer, clearing out the ad cookies
The fact that people get assaulted with a barrage of cookie requests everytime they visit a website makes for a bit of an annoying visit. Ever try telling Firefox to ask before accepting a cookie? What the hell do I need so many cookies for when I visit "your" website? Also, with all the recent headlines about consumer information being mishandled makes people all the more wary. Capitalism cares nothing about privacy, only money.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Kids, dont do cookies.
There are sites out there requiring a cookie to get past ads - you know I always give up at that point. I have never needed to see something under those cases.
So honestly - one of you cookie advocates give me a good reason to accept your cookie just because I want to visit a page on your site.
I talk about stuff.
I aloow the cookies for my online banking, login-only news sites, etc etc. When I go to a page and I see "The site ads.scummy-marketting.com wants to set a cookie" then I delete it. How are blocking those cookies hurting my internet "experience"?
Trolling is a art,
If "The Marketers" are essentially *in conflict* with consumers with regard to ad delivery, maybe their strategy of forcing ads down the throats of individuals might not be the most effective one.
... although I should note that I *do* work in marketing, as a Webmaster. But cookies really do have a great number of uses, and often provide a good amount of convenience to users without having too many pernicious uses in practice. When people who don't know better are prompted by adaware to delete all of their cookies, the net effect is more likely to be frustration than anything--people don't tend to remember their passwords, for example, so being "forgotten" by some sites is likely to be a pain.
And while cookies might be used to 'serve up targeted ads', it seems to me that if you're going to be served ads *anyhow* then you might as well see things that might be of interest to you...
worrying online marketers and Web site publishers who feel that the changing consumer attitude towards cookies is harming cookie usefulness
Perhaps if online marketers and other leeches hadn't abused that useful tool (and Javascript, and Flash, amongst others, both of which I have disabled permanently out of despair), people wouldn't have felt the need to get rid of it.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I remember back in the dark ages of 1994 when my family and I picked up our first internet-ready computer and hopped on AOL with a 14.4 modem. It wasn't long after that there were published reports of a secret form of subterfuge in our midst (the one in particular I remember was on the Today show). Something called a "cookie" was being sent to our computer as we browsed web sites, and it could track where we went and what we did. Some people in the media were outraged. Mom was somewhat apprehensive at this new way for advertisements to reach us - more, I think, about me buying something than some type of ID theft or the like.
Eventually, however, we got over it. Let's face it, folks, advertising is a part of the world and we're not going to get rid of it. Do I like targeted advertising? No. Certainly not. In fact, I take steps to prevent it from happening such as deleting cookies from known tracking sites and using wonderful Firefox extensions *cough*Adblock*cough* but they still get through.
Fine. I'll deal with targeted ads. However, there's a very real difference between someone wanting, wishing, willing me to do something (an advertisement) and someone forcing me to do it (malware/spyware/trojans/hijackers). While we often lump the two together, they are indeed different.
I hate to say it, but this time those annoying popup ads are in the right.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
You see this page when you leave their labyrinth-like site
Cookies are used for storing your session information and preferences for sites. That's what the mechanism was designed for, and so far nothing better has come up to replace it.
In terms of tracking your preferences, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I don't like someone keeping track of my browsing preferences for unrelated sites. On another, I'd rather see ads that may interest me than yet another "punch the monkey" or "refinance your home". Most people hate ads because they are annoying and uninteresting to them, not because they are selling something. This is why Google is successful: they are good at improving the chances that the ad you see is related to what you are looking for.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
If marketers want to to keep cookies, then that's all the proof I need to delete them. If these are the people who brought us popups, popunders, flash adds, etc., then screw 'em. I will block their efforts at very turn.
I keep cookies enabled by default, but delete them regularly, adding the sites to my "block" list. It's sort of a hobby to see how many sites I can collect.
It's the simplest way to track a session (i.e. the webmaster doesn't need to go through the hassle of implementing URL rewriting).
;)
Yes, I know that's not a good reason!
Huge difference between session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies end when I close my browser. I have no problems with these. They are often very useful when the website doesn't want to deal with storage on their end.
Persistent cookies... I nuke on a regular basis. I may switch on the automagic nuke ant end of browser session... but I have one or two sites (like slashdot) where I'd like to keep them...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
And realizing that cookies aren't spyware, but rather a means by which marketing companies gather and compile data about me on my own computer so that they more effectively target me with their advertising makes me more attitudinally inclined too. . .
Ummm, where's that nuke button again?
See, that's the problem with marketers. They like marketing and think it's a good thing, so they think we like marketing and think it's a good thing.
Whereas most of us think that Bill Hicks was being a bit of a soft hearted wuss in his displayed attitude toward them.
He simply called upon them to kill themselves. We want to roast them, slowly, while we watch.
Pass the beer.
KFG
No, no, no, no! That's not true. Cookies are delicous delicacies.
Does this mean I can have cookies for breakfast?
What a nifty trick.
n /flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
Looks as if flash gives each site a very small amount of local storage.
The article says it can be disabled, but doesn't link to any information.
A quick trip over to macromedia shows the web access controls... which is handy for setting global restrictions. Not really sure where my flash panel would be other then when the module is loaded, but here is a link to a web based method of setting those restrictions.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/e
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I generally block most advertizing but ocassionally i'll come across something interesting, unobtrusive and it will catch my interest. Absolut ran a series of flash ads that just invited me to play with them.
If everything were targeted to my tastes then i'd be far happier.
Occasionally i'll actually rewind tivo to watch a commericial that caught my eye as I sped through it.
Of course intelligent advertizing is expensive but I think it works. Lots of people watch the superbowl to see the ads and if marketers weren't obsessed with quantity over quality then it'd pay off in the long run.
it pisses me off how cookies are used for evil, but they can have some uses that are great for web developers such as saving a default stylesheet for a user
I originally read that as "Monsters Back "Cookies Are Good For You" Campaign", as in the cookie monster. hah.
I understand that sometimes cookies are necessary, especially when setting up online stores, but those aren't really the cookies the marketing execs are worried about.
I am sick of the cookies that serve NO PURPOSE other than tracking users on the Internet...ya know...the ones that are really getting set by the one pixel JPGs in your e-mails and/or the dozen or so ads the page loads as it starts up. Those cookies serve NO legitimate purpose from my point of view. For instance, loading up NYTimes.com results in two cookies trying to be set by NYTimes.com itself and THREE for ads: ad.doubleclick.net (ALWAYS evil), altfarm.mediaplex.com, and s0b.bluestreak.com.
Remember that these are MARKETING companies and there is nothing they love better than feature creep. Remember that DoubleClick is intensely interested in finding a way to merge its ever-growing web-tracking databases with personally identifiable information. Remember that that there are few laws effectively governing this OR THE PROTECTION OF ANY COMMERCIAL DATA for that matter.
I use Firefox with cookies generally set to "Ask me every time", and I deny ALL cookies that do not cause things to break. Try it for awhile. The absolute glut of cookies trying to be set by some sites is staggering. I even sometimes boycott sites (such as BestBuy.com) that require cookies just to enter the site at all.
My other major problem with cookies is the number of sites that are BADLY programmed so that they don't do an actual test for cookies. When you have cookies disabled some of these sites do things like tell you your username/password are invalid, but others FAIL in really annoying ways. For instance, if you don't have the right cookies enabled and try to login into BankOfAmerica.com homelink it actually logs your account in but doesn't bring you to the page to view it, and you then have no way of getting into the account except enabling the cookies and WAITING EIGHT MINUTES for the account to log out so you can log in again. THAT IS DUMB.
Lastly, cookies are a security hazard that should be used sparingly. For many services if somebody can grab the cookies off your machine they can use them to log into your accounts as you without any need to authenticate (since the cookie handles that).
When used properly cookies address a shortcoming in the HTTP protocol. But in my experience that makes up a very small portion of general usage.
Some sites which have no use whatsoever for cookies try to set them. What the heck do cookies do for me when perusing, say, recipes? You give me a reason for cookies, show some benefit to me, maybe I'll use them.
Some sites try to send me a half a dozen different cookies. I have contempt for these idiots. If they can't just use one cookie and key everything off that, they are incompetent and I will ignore their cookies just for the sheer perverse pleasure of it.
Infuriate left and right
Did someone say.. Hosts file?
# Available at http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net #remove this for atomfilms problems
127.0.0.1 ad.preferences.com
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.com
Etc. See above URL for full file.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
"Other [marketers] are already busy experimenting with newer approaches to serve up targeted ads even if a user has deleted his cookies."
.exe files in hidden parts of a website, hoping to take control of their customers' computers.
With attitudes like that, they wonder why people don't trust them?
These are the same people that discovered Flash could open popup windows even when you've disabled javascript. The same people that think nothing of attacking any security vulnerability they can find to display adverts. The same people that fill-up my "blocked webservers" list with dynamically-generated hostnames. The same people that put ActiveX controls with
Malicious use of anothers' computer without authorisation. Basically, "hackers" in the let's stop these criminals sense.
Matthew writes "An increasing numbers of computer users now understand that cookies are being used to spy on their surfing habbits and profile them without their knowledge. Consumer groups and knowledgeable web users feel that the changing use of cookies by Marketers to spy on users and profile their web browsing habbits is harming the usability of the web the trust on which it is based. These consumers want to persuade companies making antispyware programs to destroy all cookies used by marketers to profile users and not to sell out to marketers or spyware companies. Some consumers think that providing marketers with more information about users opinions on 3rd party cookie profiling and spying might change their attitudes towards cookies. Others are already busy experimenting with torture methods suitable for convincing those marketeers that didn't see reason."
cookies don't steal your CPU usage or disable your windows firewall.
Easy solution. Go to a site that wants ads for the viewing. Swell, give me a checkbox and I'll decide which of your selections are most interesting to me to view during that session.
people are becoming more and more aware that they are being tracked and profiled nonconsensually.
.) _many_ of the people would choose not to accept the agreement.
many people _doing_ the tracking and profiling _think_ that doing so nonconsensually is acceptable.
the people _being_ tracked and profiled nonconsensually know that it's not acceptable.
the people _doing_ the tracking and profiling know _unconsciously_ that doing so nonconsensually is _not_ acceptable. they know that if they explicitly informed the "trackees" about this activity and how the collected information was being used (in the form of an agreement, i.e. "by shopping at this website you are agreeing to be tracked and profiled and this is how we are using this information . .
business models predicated on nonconsensual agreements are unacceptable and rampant.
This: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html will block a lot of those ad servers before it even tries to load.
:)
This: http://adblock.mozdev.org/dev.html is also useful
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
I really hope the Anti-Spyware/Adware people tell them to "Fuck-Off"! Or at the very least, still flag their cookies on a seperate tab like Ad-Aware does for low risk stuff.
Otherwise, I'm doing what everyone else does and block them all.
Well, here it is years later and the general populace is still concerned about cookie use and it's abuse. Rightfully so we should be concerned.
There is little to no argument that can be given that cookie use has not been abused to the disadvantage of us common folk.
By the simple fact on line marketers do not want cookies to be deleted blows any argument they use right out of the water.
Cookie use has little advantage for the end user save for remember your last session with a website.
Beyond that it is most advantageous to marketering types to track your movement, etc. If they want to know my activities on the internet the only way I would allow that is for them to pay me. And I don't mean some half cent per cookie either.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Is this tea-shirt a cunning part of the marketing strategy?
...if i'm really that interested in something I can go and find it on google (it's what it's there for).
Ads suck, on a page you *can* ignore them when you have to actually look at them to close them I get annoyed.
enjoy.
I recently added some nice eye candy that made a web site a hell of a lot easier to navigate, as well as adding quite a bit of needed functionality. The javascript that I used uses a cookie to keep track of what you have done to navigate the page so that it doesn't reset itself everytime you click to navigate somewhere else. It doesn't keep track of anything about you, just about the page you are looking at. Is this a good reason?
Ok. After this http://slashdot.org/articles/05/06/18/1310243.shtm l?tid=95&tid=187&tid=98/ and this http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/17/01 39240&tid=123&tid=95&tid=17/ , cookies and cache are disabled. What else should I do?
It's what the title might as well be...
Tag lost or not installed.
They were meant for a time long before this present point in time.
Responsible ISPs should delete cookies at their cache and the internet should once again return to the state state IPs are not at all connected with idenity.
You shouldn't take cookies from strangers!
Yeah cookies can remember my zip code. Big deal, I already know my zip code, and it is only 5 digits. As it happens my web browser also knows my zipcode from the last time I entered it, so the moment I type '5' it pops up a little completion box with my full zip code in it. Same for my address, city, and State. (Speaking of state, why do I have to find my state in a tiny pull down box, The standard is two letters that are easier to type than it is to navigate that stupid list)
I don't want one click shopping. It isn't hard to enter my credit card number into a web form. I'd prefer not to have that number stored in my computer at all. (Yes I know I'm protected, but it is a hassle to dispute charges)
Cookies are useful and necessary in many cases (or perhaps they avoid ugly workarounds for statefulness).
But here's what everybody should do:
1) Go to the W3C
2) Come up with a "standard" cookie
3) This standard would have plainly understandable fields that tell you *exactly* what is in that cookie
4) The browser makers and MS would make cookies easily visible and browsable
5) Users could then decide to keep a cookie based on (a) Who its from (b) its content
6) Cookies that don't adhere to the standard could be deleted by browsers without comment.
Can this be abused? Of course. But the answer to this isn't more marketing jargon, its to make the process more transparent so people understand what's going on.
This is simple stuff. Why do we have to make it so hard?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Smith: "Cookies need love, too."
- When google tries to set third party cookie tied to a keyword in you search. You then may have cookie for a site you never visited and one you may never visit
- When a site tries to set a cookie before any content is loaded. This used to be standard for those firms trying to get traffic through mistyped URL. Now, unfortunately, even legitimate websites do this more than not.
- When a site sets 10 cookies on the home page
Business is about trying to set up a relationship between people offering a product or service and people willing to acquire the product or service. Reputable businesses do not ask to see the customer cash at the door. Even reputable car dealers do not ask it you are going to buy today.These cookies problems are largely caused by firms forcing users to make decisions about cookies on the home page, and secondarily, forcing users to make decisions about cookies when the user is browsering product. For content sites, it is appropriate to set a limited number of cookies when the user selects an option from the home page. For those selling a product, I do not see an issue with letting a user browse. Set a cookies when the user adds something to the cart.
One of the silliest things that I see is the brick and motor stores denying a user because cookies are not being accepted. This means that I cannot browse their products online, which means I will just travel to another store, a store where I am more sure product exists, rather than wasting time and gas going to a store that obviously does not want my money. Sale lost.
On more thing. If a firm chooses a third party tracking company, choose only one. The best argument against cookies is that many sites contract with two or more tracking companies. The tracking companies have known vulnerabilities. By contracting with multiple companies, the user basically has little choice but to deny cookies.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Just what is it about the people who have jobs in marketing that leads them to believe the public is something that they own? They seem to think that the 'market' is a giant ocean into which they are completely free to dip their nets or a giant forest through which they can just chop down the trees.
The market, or the public spaces on the web, is more like a holy space or temple that they, as recognized sleazy sinners, should enter in fear and humility, desperate to seek forgiveness for their arrogance, greed, and repulsiveness.
The idea that marketters should somehow be upset that ordinary web users would use software to keep them out of their computers is absurd. It's like rats complaining about homeowners putting up traps and poison to keep them out of the kitchen.
Marketing software 'cookies' are like rat droppings. Finding them on your PC is a sign that you could have serious health problems in your system unless you start to take serious steps to get rid of the source of the problem.
And, marketers who believe that they own you and your computer, is the source of the problem.
1) I don't want the marketers knowing enough about me to give me targeted ads
2) If I get random ads it gives me useful information on the marketer, such as who their clients are and what kind of businesses the marketer takes money from
Ok, let me back up a tad. For marketers I trust, such as my hometown newspaper's web site, I don't mind giving them basic things like a wide age range e.g "20s, 30s, etc", gender, whether I have kids or not, and a wide income range e.g. "under $25K/yr" "25K-50K" "50K-100K" "100K+." But even then I'm wary.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Err... You should never have to use something like Javascript to perform navigation! Bloody hell, why can't people think about accessibility? How is someone with a screen reader or braille reader going to be able to use that (most of these DO NOT support javascript, cookies etc...). Why not create your site using non-eye candy related techs. XHTML, CSS are all you need. Javascript is ok for very few things - and personally I never use it. Everything that javascript does can be done better using server side scripting or some other way.
Nope,
IMNSHO, any site that requires the use of flash, ECMAscript, Java (clientside) or anything else aside from straight *TML is broken and needs fixing.
A site should be navigable by Lynx on its index page and abide by the previous statement everywhere else.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
By overusing cookies causing browser caches to get clogged up with them making users regularly remove them to keep performance up they did it to themselves. Their own greed is their undoing.
When I see no less than 3 cookies for every advertising site recorded in my cookies file, something is seriously wrong.
These people are a day late and dollar short worrying about what cookies will do to online marketing.
They should be worrying about what the mozilla extension AdBlock is doing to them, particularly the ability to block with regular expressions.
I am still amazed that people put all of their banner ads in a directory on their server called "ads" which makes it easy to block advertisements without blocking anything else.
I would make a comment about their intelligence, but how smart can I be blowing the whistle on this thing?
Tell that to my waistline, im gonna sue these guys for my obesity
I would have to log into slashdot every time I visit.
So basically the browser should check the document location's domain and only allow cookie requests for for that domain, no ?
I.e. if slashdot.org carries an ad from adserver.com , then in no way should the cookie requests from adserver.com be honored, even if the cookies are set for that domain as well.
If, of course, one were to visit adserver.com directly, then those cookies should be allowed to be set/read.
Notice the marketers are describing _other_ usages of cookies that are good -- they're forgetting to mention what *they* want to do with cookies ... probably because that would not be palatable.
Kind of reminds me of the new McDonalds commercials with the sportier Ronald, and all the vegetables that are shown to promote health, however McDonald's core items (burgers, fries, soft drinks) don't make an appearance.
These advertisers must be desperate if they are trying to market around themselves.
I for one welcome our Nestle Tollhouse Pillsbury Dough-Boy Overloads.
good stuff
just add an entry to HTTP get requests along the lines of
X-Demographics: Age/32; Sex/Male; Location/Seattle; Hobbies/Games/WebComics/Everquest; Marital/Single; No/Loans/Credit Yes/Employment/Entertainment
the keywords can be whatever the hell you want while it's in 'X-' status, logs can be scanned to see which keywords people actually use (suggested lists would come with the browser or plug-in that implements this). Some people will lie in their demographics, but odds are they would just be blocking the ads otherwise. Ideally you could tailor which sites would get which 'meta-cookie'; 32/male might be allowed to the world, but the details restricted, all up to the client implementation.
No server should choke on the extra line, because if it did it would have been exploitable anyway.
Blocking web-ads is just as much an act of theft as skipping commercails with a PVR. But seriously, well targetted ads are a win/win, and a system that allows the user to control exactly what information is sent out, instead of trying to make assumptions based on other sites visited is simpler, more respectful, more accurate, and more acceptable than the alternatives.
They just don't get it, do they? Any more than spammers get it. Or spyware writers and purveyors. They act as though any personal computer hooked up to the public Internet for any reason is fair game and should be wide open to them. The user's identities, their viewing habits, they personal lives and personal information. Just like hackers who won't stay out of computers they have no right to access.
I note that Slashdot has cookies in my cache. I think if cookie users are above-board, they will make a point of showing in the browser window in a frame the exact content of the cookies they are putting on and the format and an explanation. Anything that doesn't hold water should be tossed and the site not visited and listed as untrustworthy.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Something really disturbing me about this campaign (aside from the "directly circument the user's explicit cookie settings by hiding backups in Macromedia's PIE and using them to restore deleted cookies") is the mention of coming after the anti-ad/spy/malware industry. Many of these products are aimed at the privacy conscious, and while you're scanning a hard drive anyway, it's quick and painless to throw in deletion of common common ad-network cookies. Are the marketeers going to pout and stamp around acting disappointed and call it a day, or will they start sending cease-and-desists?
It will be interesting to see how they'll go along those lines, particularly following the recent Symantec / Hotbar suit.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I don't mind cookies so much as I mind sites setting the expiration to 30 years in the future. It just bugs me that they think they own a small peice of my hard drive for that long, are they really going to get anything useful out of it if I visit the site once and then come back in 30 years?o kie-prefs.html
Firefox is helpful with this, you can set the maximum lifetime of a cookie with the network.cookie.lifetime.* settings, see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/cookies/co
I have mine set to two days. If I visit a site and don't come back in that long, I don't want the cookie hanging around.
Javascript navigation is evil. Among other failings, it breaks "open link in a new window/new layer" functionality. And on many sites it breaks the "back" button, too.
Please mod the parent up.
Even cookie monster admits they're only a sometimes food.
You can have cookie crisp.
Affiliate programs need a unique way to identify web browsers and visitors to the site over a period of sometimes weeks. Yes, its easy for someone to click on an advert and then be tracked from their point of entry, but when thye leave and come back a few times over the coming weeks before actually spending money, the original affiliate doesn't get credited with the sale unless the visitor can be somehow linked to them over time. This means cookies. If you remove the ability to credit affiliates with a sale a month after the initial visit, affiliate programs will dry up.
And affiliate programs are probably the only way it makes sense to advertise on the web, as they are accountable, no one makes money until a purchase is made... pay per click is too easily abused, and bald banners hurt sites more often than they help.
And before anyone starts shouting "skr3w teh advertis3rzz teh inatrweb iz fr33!!1", I suggest you people try moving out of your mothers' basements and earning a living for yourselves for a change. It costs money to do just about everything, and that money very often comes from advertisers. If you feel like knocking your favourite site off the web, don't click the adverts.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
What would be more descriptive of its actual use?
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke"... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/help02.html#117157
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I think some people are going to make a big deal out of "targeted advertising" on both sides of the argument; talking about how it invades privacy unnecessarily, and talking about how it's more effective if ads are targeted.
In my opinion, effective ads aren't necessarily targeted. Effective ads are entertaining. Internet ads are ignored by most people mostly because they're on the Internet to a) be informed or b) be entertained. And we expect to be informed for free in the Information Age, not have to buy the $59.99 hardcover book AdSense or DoubleClick throws at us when we look up the evolutionary history of plasmodesmata.
The other alternative is to go with the tried-and-true method: ads that entertain. If ad execs think that some cheap 2 hours worth of graphic design is going to hook us, they should re-examine past practices. People like to be entertained by ads. Heck, some people watch the superbowl just for the ads. Would it be that hard to put in, say, 6 hours, and come up with a funny comic strip-type ad? Something you might expect to see in Dilbert or Foxtrot or another geek-oriented comic? I'm willing to bet it'd have a much more positive response.
This is just like the spam email with everything spelled in spamish vi.aglra chermist
If you have to go to those lengths to get past a filter I put up, get a hint, I am not interested in whatever your pushing. The
filter is there for a reason.
We delete the cookies for a reason. Marketers who wont
take NO for an answer is the reason.
How do you shop online, then? Or is that a tin-foil hat subject for you, too?
I don't respond to AC's.
JavaScript can be completely accessable, if implemented correctly. For example, say a tree: You render the actual data in (X)HTML, allowing for any type of browser to access it. On top of that, you style it with CSS with all elements visible, incase someone who supports CSS has JavaScript disabled. Finally, you code the JS, which hides the elements by looping through the DOM and changing the "display" property of the elements.
If it's a screenreader, it gets a perfectly valid list of links; if it's a browser that supports CSS, a non-interactive tree; JavaScript, the completely dynamic tree.
Using cookies to store states such as that with JS is a completely valid use, preventing the person from having to click through the tree each time he refreshes.
Server side scripting is a nice alternative; but it is too slow for something like navigation. (Click on link, wait for reload, scroll back down, click on link, etc)
Its commonly done in travel sites to maintain statefulness between page renders.
Statefulness matters because unlike store inventory, there's not really the concept of a shopping cart. You want to travel between point A->B, but your choices from page to page will depend entirely on what happens with inventory completely separate from the web site itself (I realize in re-reading this paragraph that this is almost incomprehensible, but still...).
Are there workarounds? Yes, but they're ugly, complicated, and unreliable, and require huge application servers, particularly when you have people coming from a mega-proxy like AOL.
And these cookies are typically gone when you leave the site. They're simply used to track where you are in the purchasing process. Its nothing personal.
Plus, I do find it handy that certain sites remember me, but that's more of a convenience factor.
I'm sure there are many other reasons.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Most Slashdot readers seem to be either one or the other. Cookies (for the most part) are harmless and transparent. Why do you expect that by using someone else's web site you have the right to do it on your own terms? It's a sick sort of self-importance that makes you think you can do anything you want and be completely anonymous. The Internet is fairly new but having your presence and actions noted by others has been around for a long time.
And explain to me - how in the world does a cookie saying "Unknown User X likes to visit slashdot and wired" compromise your sacred privacy?
As part of a continuous effort of karma prostitution, I offer this related story:
i cleID=160400749
"Company Bypasses Cookie-Deleting Consumers"
http://www.internetweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?art
Pertinent Sentence:
"United Virtualities's PIE helps combat this consumer behavior by leveraging a feature in Flash MX called local shared objects."
Tag lost or not installed.
Anyone interested in setting up "unsafecount.com", where you vote against cookies?
I've found this configuration to be optimal for me:
1. Always keep "ask before setting cookies" checked.
2. When you go to a site you know would like to save relevant info on you (login status, online cart...), just check "allow sites to set cookies". Now you get to answer "yes" to its cookies or "no" if ad server cookies are sneaked in while you have this enabled.
3. Afterwards, and in all other cases, keep "allow sites to set cookies" unchecked.
You'll now never have sites annoyingly popup the "XYZ wish to set a cookie" dialog, and the only time you have to at all care for them is when you for the first time visit a site with cookies you want it to set. All other times, nothing will be set for stuff you don't want (disallow cookies in Firefox will still allow cookies you have formerly accepted) and nothing will be popped up about cookies.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
You see, the value of my eyeballs is propoertional to the number of clicks you can get from me. Essentially, by tracking my click stream, you're raising the value of my eyeballs -- that is, you're charging me more for your site, without telling me about that. I don't trust someone who raises his prices silently, and so, no, I don't want "interesting" ads. I don't trust you -- why should I trust your ads?
How do you shop online, then? Or is that a tin-foil hat subject for you, too?
;-) He said he whitelists in the first sentence. In case you are unfamiliar with the technique you whitelist (allow) the store's domain so that the store's cookies work but all the marketing cookies refer to other domains and are therefore disallowed.
How do you shop online if you cannot read?
is worrying online marketers and Web site publishers who feel that the changing consumer attitude towards cookies is harming cookie usefulness and unfairly lumping them with spyware and viruses.
And all this time I thought it was the use of cookies in marketing, tracking user habits etc. that harmed the usefulness of cookies.
The people who make these kinds of of comments typically have set up a blog page and consider that the pinnacle of the web. They're completely clueless about how large ecommerce sites typically work. And they usually think that because they code their blog by hand that it somehow makes them an expert on websites that are designed to be used by thousands of people simultaneously to get actual business done.
Lynx. Cripes. Nobody uses Lynx (go check google if you don't believe me), so that isn't the LCD that's used to determine the appropriate level of features within a web page.
I've been using whitelisting with [first party] cookies (generally with sites I'm a member of) and javascript (only for sites I use that require it such as gmail). Normally this would be a tedious task, but I have some extensions to help me out when it comes to security in this manner.
Actually, I have probably over 40 extensions installed right now, but those are some of the most useful.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
S is for shotgun, to make marketers distress; oh shotgun shotgun shotgun starts with S.
That's a sample from a marketing recording that Negativland once used
that is apt to be pointed out here.
>See, that's the problem with marketers. They like marketing and think
>it's a good thing, so they think we like marketing and think it's a
>good thing.
In an environment where everything is up to the consumer, everything
becomes the fault of the consumer as well. This myopia of never, ever
focusing attention on the methods and history of marketing and
advertising is a sign of their manipulative and authoritarian nature.
"There is a culture of fear in the marketplace" when it comes to
consumer attitudes toward cookies, says Nick Nyhan, president of New
York-based Dynamic Logic Inc.[snip]
He takes an attitude of empowerment (for lack of a better term) and
turns it into a fault. His statement is just as legitimate when
inverted to acknowledge the reasons why people delete cookies:
There is a culture of abuse in the advertising industry.
This is built in to the profession. Advertising doesn't work at all
unless you are manipulated. Case in point: calling this a problem of
"marketing," which is more "behind the scenes" and perhaps a bit
mysterious, and not "advertising," which is what puts the cookies on
your computer. Advertising is what everybody knows. Commercials are
easy to dislike, and they know it. This was the genius of Bill Hicks'
bit: including marketing.
Marketers, meanwhile, counter that cookies serve plenty of useful
features consumers may not realize -- such as automatically filling in
a username on a site that requires logging in, or helping a weather
site remember a ZIP Code so that it can show a local forecast on
return visits.
None of which has anything to do with marketing and the cookies that
*ads* place on your machine. Personally, Firefox is great for me here.
It deletes all of my cookies at the end of a session, and I've
whitelisted all of the sites that I use passwords for. Good cookies
stay, bad cookies leave. It's that simple, and by looking at my
browser's cookie cache it's easy to see which are the good cookies and
which are the bad.
Mr. Hughes and others want software makers to draw a big
distinction between spyware and cookies.
How about good cookies and bad cookies? No distinction? Tiny
distinction? By the previous example of using irrelevant registration
sites as a reason to trust advertising cookies, Mr. Hughes already
betrays his bias, that he is speaking for and responsible to bad
cookies. To acknowledge this distinction would implicate himself, and
he knows it because he doesn't mention it. Does he think that nobody
would notice?
Interviewer: Why should we keep cookies?
Mr. Hughes: Because sites use them for things other than advertising.
Interviewer: What about cookies used for advertising?
Mr. Hughes: [sound of crickets]
The company has begun marketing a technology known as a persistent
identification element, or PIE. The tool uses features in Macromedia
Inc.'s popular Flash software, which is used for designing and viewing
animated online ads, to secretly make backup copies of a user's
cookies before they are deleted. A handful of Web publishers and
advertising companies are using the technology to track users,
according to Mr. Tenembaum, though he declines to name them.
Call me nutty, but not being willing to name the companies who are
tracking users is not a good way to engender trust. What is this
article about again?
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Mod the parent up so more people can see this extension. Very useful extension.
You would think that a list of sites you "block" and another list that you "allow" is a good thing. I beg to differ. Whenever I close my browser, I delete ALL lists of any kind, also cookies, temporary internet cache, web history, etc. When I start my browser, it is as if it had never been run before. I also delete any information the OS "stores" about me, like my recent opened documents, programs I use most often, etc.
I don't believe that any software should store any information in a form that would be easily digestable by spyware, viruses, etc. You should store your own lists in a protected (possibly encrypted) document of a name you created yourself. I find it quite amazing that people use and "trust", Media Player, iTunes, WinAmp, etc, to store their song lists. All it takes is one dormant, one-shot, then-it-deletes-itself, information sniffer to glean pages about your likes, dislikes, habits, etc.
Just like a C++ or JAVA object, there are things that I will share publicly, and things that I deem to be private about myself. Being here on slashdot is something that I can reveal publicly. My tastes in consumer products, and hobbies is not. Some people could care less if they give out everything about themselves. Good for them. I hope they get as much snail mail and email SPAM as they can take.
I absolutely cannot stand being marketed to. Web pop-ups, flashy advertisements, videos, moving windows. It is all ridiculous. News papers made money in the past without ever having all that flash, and there was no way to "probe" for your tastes. Companies simply followed their sales figures. Now we've got an entire industry devoted to "knowing about you" now.
How will this trip end? In a bad train wreck I suppose. I just hope I survive it before having to give up my kids DNA at birth for an entertainment industry tracking system. We saw only the tip of the iceberg in "Minority Report". Gee, lets see if we can build a statistically guassian determinable system to find out what you like to 5 9's accuracy! That way we can save 2 pennies of profit for each person!
Please support boycotting, ad blocking, the deletion of browser history, cache files, and cookies!
(As soon as this message is sent, the slashdot cookie will be deleted.)
Note: This message brought to you buy a person who has withdrawn from society and just wishes to be left alone. I have become comfortably numb.
Have a nice day! Off soapbox.
If cookies stop being usefull for tracking people, they'll start using your IP address. For 99% of the users out there, their IP address is consistant. The only reason they probably don't do that now, is because it takes server space to track all those people, rather then letting their computer track themselfs.
g id=666">
<img src="www.trackyoass.com/cgi-bin/trackmepls.cgi?im
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
My home page is set to google.com/lg (MyGoo) and recently after clearing out all my Firefox cookies I noticed that when I launch Firefox and MyGoo auto loads, a few seconds later I get a 'Confirm setting cookie' that .starwars.com is trying to set Wookie-Cookie.
Never noticed it before as I do go to starwars.com and 'Allow' cookies from that site, but now with the cookies deleted, www.google.com/lg is causing the starwars.com wookie-cookie to be set on my system....
I don't have time to find out right now what on the MyGoo page is causing connection to starwars.com as I'm off to play with the other grownups in the park, so does another have any ideas on this one?
That is my criterium if I will allow it. Konqeror lets me see the valid-till date when it is requested, and I base my judgement for the whole site on that first cookie. The periods range from a day(allow) tru a year(aloow if i think i can trust them) on to far in the future (1-1.2011 or 2037) The latter get instant rejection for all cookies. Konq also has this nice option to disallow cookies from servers other that the one serving the page, I haven't found that one in ff yet?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
> Cookies are used for storing your session information and preferences for sites.
Another common misconception. Those who know will can tell you Cookies are delicous delicacies.
-1, extra syllable.
Go to the macromedia.com control panel page, scroll down and select "Global Storage Settings Panel".
Move the disk space slider to none. This will cause the flash player to always ask before storing information. Or you can uncheck the bottom box to disable local storage altogether.
Next, go to the fifth tab, and select "Delete all sites" to remove all information already stored.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Legitimate cookies: My company's cookies.
Illegitimate cookies: Any other company's cookies -- especially my competitors.
Yeah, right! This whole concept that there is such a thing as a "legitimate cookie" even exists is garbage when they are trying to sell you something you didn't Opt In for in the first place.
Down with them all!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
These marketers should try looking at it from the consumer's point of view, who ask: why should I let you take up even a single byte of space on my hard drive? What benefit do I get from letting advertisers leave their mark on my system? If they want better results with their ads, then they should make some sort of an effort to display them on sites that are relevant to what they're selling. It is not my problem that my behavior is making life difficult for their business. Another important fact here is that internet advertisers have already used up all of people's trust and goodwill towards them long long ago. We are now in the age of spyware, adware, popups, popunders, and all sorts of other garbage. No offense to advertising companies, as I know they're not all scum, but there are more than enough bad apples in the industry for me to mistrust them all. Thus I will not let them put anything, even a harmless txt file on my computer (and I'm cynical enough to be paranoid about some new windows/IE exploit that can use cookies to install crap on my computer).
Just yesterday there was a post in the news item that WebObjects does not use cookies at all, yet tracks users from page to page through the session ID in the URL, effectively overcoming the stateless nature of http.
Now if I read that right, why can't legit websites employ such technical solutions instead of forming lobbying groups to keep cookies out of the definitinon of virus and spyware as the article suggests?
Aren't they wasting their time trying to PR instead of actually tackling the real solutions?
"They argue that cookies -- small files that Web sites use to identify users and to serve up targeted ads -- don't deserve their bad reputation and shouldn't be lumped together with such Web scourges as spyware and viruses...As a default setting, Microsoft's Internet Explorer blocks some "third-party" cookies, which can be used by advertising companies to track users across multiple sites."
Oh, I couldn't POSSIBLY see where that bad reputation could have come from! Now they are right... They do have good uses. But trying to totally gloss over the fact that they can and will be abused conjures distrust of the highest order.
And hey, if we're all so honest and all, why aren't you:
A) Asking me before collecting my information
B) Compensating me for my information
I mean, you have nothing to fear since we know you're all so honest and upright and that cookies can never be abused by you, right? RIGHT???
PR spin weenies...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I think you have it backwards. The majority of times, cookies do things that are good for the end user. Cookies allow you to have a customized experience on a site, etc..
For ecommerce to work, a computer has to be able to track a session from product selection through payment. Cookies are the best way to handle such a task.
A large number of sites use cookies for tracking people within their site. I contend that this type of tracking is extremely valuable to web users and consumers. For example, if I see that no one is interested in a given page, I might pull the page and put something better in its place.
Stores spend a great deal of effort on tracking their advertising efforts...I contend that this is good for consumers. A store might track the result of different ad campaigns. They might spend less on campaigns that are attacting low quality users and spend more on those that attract high quality (visitors that result in sales). This type of tracking is beneficial for consumers as it helps the store optimize their ad spending dollars.
The one and only bad area of cookie usage comes from the big web firms that are trying to build massive data warehouses to track people across web sites. That means that there really is only one major area of cookie abuse.
I despise companies that were developing such technologies. Judging from the stock performance of these dot bombs...their efforts have proven to be a bust. Companies like double click will always continue to exist as long as marketing schools teach that the goal of business is total dominance of the market. My hope is that the market will continue to reject the dot bombs trying to acheive total market domination.
Basically, you have a technology that does good things...like allowing personalization in web sites. The technlogy has been abused by a small number of marketing firms. The market has largely rejected the things these companies were trying to do with the technology...we need to stay vigilant to abusive companies like DoubleClick and ValueClick. Cookie technology itself has proven beneficial to web surfers.
I never understood why cookies are bad. They can contain info about our history of using those sites, which conflicts with the illusion of anonymity, and deniability that our visits ever happened. But they did happen, and our anonymity is really an illusion, at least in terms of our being the same visitors as before. Cookies can't be shared between sites, though sites can of course share info between their servers in other ways (email, or server-server messaging). And cookies do store some info on our computers, without our permission or even per-incident knowledge - unless we set our browsers to ask/notify us. But so what? Those cookies can't do anything but store some history: they're not executable, not viruses, not able to collect any other info or touch any other data.
Really, it seems that cookiephobia is paranoia. It is possible that a browser bug can allow cookie features to create security holes, but they're no more vulnerable than, say, caching images. And they're extremely valuable. They complete the Web as a client/server system, without which all kinds of expensive, complicated, inconvenient hacks would be used in their place. So only the most profit-driven sites would have the feature, using other techniques. Little hobbyist websites, less likely to abuse us, wouldn't have any history features, while corporate sites would be sharing our history with buyers at least as much as today, with more profit motive to justify the more expensive, complex infrastructure.
Of course, cookies do represent a hidden history that, while convenient and deserved, often are totally unnoticed. Such a hidden record is dissonant, especially when outward signs might allow us the illusion that our visits are purely anonymous, and deniable. So I'd expect people to hack better cookie management and visualization tools, to let us better track who's tracking our transactions with them. But rather than hack some code, make a plugin, open a messaging proxy server, everyone just complains. That sounds like paranoia to me. Why not just calm down, and have a cookie?
--
make install -not war
Get Privoxy. You know you want to.
I've been surfing the web, advertisement free, since 1998.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I am not opposed to cookies that perform a function I wish to have. I am opposed to cookies that in any way serve to advertise anything. If I want a product I'll research it. I have not, nor ever will, purchase something because it was put in my face without my consent. In fact, companies who use that type of advertising may lose any and all of my business on principle alone.
fasNAshun "all the worlds a stage..."
How come most /. stories I read these days appeared in the "mainstream" media first.
This is old news!
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
If marketer's hadn't spent the last few decades making people feel as if they've been shot in the butt with a tranquilizer dart, poked, prodded, measured and sampled, then woke up with a tag affixed to their ear and a barcode tattoo on their forehead just for looking at an ad, perhaps more people might trust them today.
If marketers didn't spend so much time trying to figure out how to cram pop-up/under/over/whatevers down people's throats and how to track their every move through the web, often exploiting browser bugs in ways that would get them convicted if they were 15 and in school rather than mid 30's and marketers leading to many browser crashes and hogging a great deal of CPU/RAM (yes, the bugs shouldn't be there, but that doesn't grant a get out of jail free card), perhaps people wouldn't mind marketing so much.
If marketing would focus more on making sure new products ARE a great value and then letting people know rather than the current all too common mission of convincing people that bad to mediocre and overpriced products are somehow better than the competition's equally bad/mediocre overpriced products, perhaps people would be more inclined to listen to their message.
I have met marketers that really DO try to influence product design to give the people what they want and who really do want to tell the truth about a decent product, but unfortunatly, those don't seem to be in the majority anymore.
Of course, the absolute lowest is when a dozen or so PhDs in psychology gang up on 5 year olds to create reasonable (for a 5 year old) expectations that no product can possibly live up to.
Much like the legal profession, the marketing profession has come to be dominated by bottom feeders out to legally rob the public. No amount of "image rehabilitation" will improve their public image until they find a way to flush the bottom feeders out of the profession.
I expected to read 1000 comments from people talking about how cookies are not evil, and how they have been mis portrayed, but thats not what I read at all. Let me go over what I know, and maybe some people can correct me... here are the common cookie fears I know of
Cookies can be used to track my browsing habbits
Well, yes and no. If yahoo.com sets a cookie, google.com can not read it. A 3rd party tracking service could get involved, and could set a cookie via img tags. But even without that cookie, they could juat as easily track you by your IP address and UserAgent strings.
Cookies fill up my hard drive
Seriously, have you ever checked how much space cookies take up? I think my cookie file is maybe 1mb, and I browse alot of sites.
Cookies are used to store my personal information
Well, yeah. But cookies are on your computer, not the web pages. In order for a site to set a cookie with your name and address, you would have had to give it to them first, your browser doesnt just send it to them by default. If you are worried about a company having your personal info, yet you still fill it into any form you see, cookies are NOT your problem.
Im sure I can go on with more fears, I hear them alot, but I wont. Anyone else who can think of any, or feel they can counter one of those three, please chime in
Not long after IE 4 came out, Microsoft tried to make it illegal to delete cookies. Mysteriously, it is getting increasingly difficult to find those articles on the web.
Right now, I have cookies disabled by default and the Permit Cookies extension installed. Every time I want to be logged on automatically at a site (eg. Slashdot), I hit Alt+C and press "Allow", which will allow cookies from that domain. When a site bitches about me not accepting cookies but I feel that site shouldn't use cookies at all, I hit Alt+C again and press "Session", which will make the cookie disappear when I close my browser.
Zero problems with tracking cookies since I started using this method with a minimum hassle.
Bored? Browse Slashdot with a +6 modifier for Troll comme
... the ones I can dip in milk!
Flaimbait eh? more signs of idiots moderating
Now this bost could be considered flaimbait if it were not for the cogency of my previous post being modded flaimbait.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Whenever visiting a new site that wants to set cookies, I look at the cookie expiration date before making a decision. A cookie which expires at the end of the session is usually fine with me. A cookie which expires 30 years from now, even on a site that deserves to set a cookie, is rejected. A cookie which expires in 6 months or a year on a site I visit often and enjoy is usually allowed. There's no rationale for having cookies persist longer than that.
A site which wants to set 5 or 10 or more cookies, even with reasonable expiration dates, gets them rejected. There's no reason that I'll accept to set large numbers of cookies.
And then there's the content of those cookies. I'd probably be more likely to allow additional cookies if they'd put them in plain text so I know easily and quickly what information they contain.
Too bad Mosaic crashes just about everywhere nowadays. :( But to make up for that, most browsers these days give options to disable cookies altogether, thankfully.
Sometimes cookies are good. Like it would be great if the UPS web site would remember my freakin country selection. I'm getting really tired of selecting it all the time...
Are you sure about that?
The only definite link I can see between those who want less restraints on cookies and the marketers who are busy trying to find ways to exploit your attitude, is that a journalist grouped them in the same article. Apart form that, they're completely different organisations. Grouping them together indiscriminately just because they're "marketing" isn't really fair.
I dislike being targeted with annoying advertising as much as most people here, and I have no problem with taking steps to miss or reduce it. If I'm looking to buy something, though, I want to be told what my options are. Very often it's the marketing people who provide me with the information I want. If they do this without annoying me, without spying on me, and as long as they don't start trying to persuade me to buy something I don't want, I don't have a problem. Often I actually have respect for people who can do this well, and there are people who can.
Believe it or not, I like the way that Amazon uses information about my browsing, past purchases and books I own, and what books other people have liked, to make suggestions. I also don't mind them using my preferences to make suggestions for other people. It's open about the way it's being done, very often it finds me books that look interesting, and most importantly I trust them not to do anything stupid. This is marketing, and I don't consider this particular marketing to be evil or annoying at all. If I took all the steps available to stop them identifying and tracing me through their site, I wouldn't have anywhere near as useful an experience.
My impression of marketers is that they're about as diverse as high-tech computer users. It wouldn't be appropriate to compare an open source developer with a black-hat cracker just because a journalist had their computer destroyed by one, and it's not appropriate to do the same for marketers. At the very least, marketing should be referred to by the different types of marketing, but grouping it all together under the one word is silly.
I'm all for complaining about people who use subversive and annoying tactics to market things at people. But come on -- businesses have to have some way to communicate with potential customers. That's called marketing too.
I don't mind the use of cookies in shopping sites, or anything that needs to keep track of something for you. But tracking my behavior on a site when it's being done simply to determine my behavior, especially when 99% of the time I'm hitting one page that I've been referred to is annoying.
I talk about stuff.
Oatmeal raisin are reasonably healthy and therefore "good for you".
Oreo cookies, with their lard and sugar filling, are most definitely unhealthy and not at all "good for you".
oh wait...
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
From TFA: "[Corporations] feel that the changing consumer attitude towards cookies is harming cookie usefulness and unfairly lumping them with spyware and viruses."
And I feel that the changing corporate attitude towards consumers is harming corporate usefulness and unfairly lumps consumers in with goods and resources.
It appears that more and more businesses are starting to see customers as almost like a parasite -- something that drains away their profit margins. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that those same people who are calling and complaining and insisting that stuff actually provide value are the same people who bought their product in the first place. Businesses do not exist in spite of the customer -- the exist because of the customer. Seems obvious, yet increasingly often, I find I need to point this out to "Customer Service Reps" and the like. I find I need to use phrases like, "Look, I'm the flipping customer here!" This is not a sign of a healthy relationship.
"We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings -- and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it." -- cluetrain.org
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
rm -f $(locate .macromedia | egrep -i '\.(fso|sol)$')
Hmmmm.... seems Macromedia Flash is going on the BIG NO NO list for applications in my next install.
Better yet - Maybe I'll run the whole darn system as a virtual machine inside my RAM in the future, let them try to make secret copies there.
Mwhahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Debian has a magical solution to this problem: they don't distribute Macromedia Flash.
What? Not enough games for you? Go download the quake deb or any of the other dozens of great game packages.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
If you know what cookie is good for you while you're surfing the Internet to kingdom's come... You'll check out that I have...
Original OREO, Mini OREO, Chocolate Creme OREO, Golden OREO Original, Reduced Fat OREO, OREO Double Stuf, Fudge Covered OREO, Fudge Mint OREO, Golden OREO Chocolate Creme, Double Delight OREO MintCreme, 100 Calorie Pack OREO Thin Crisps, Double Delight OREO Peanut Butter and Chocolate, Milk Chocolate Covered OREO, Milk Chocolate Covered Mint OREO memories and...
(ba da bing!) Oreo crumbs all over my keyboards.
No, really... Why the hell are they called cookies? It doesn't even describe their function or anything.
Then again, random names for random things is so 1990es...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
There is no way 99% of users are coming from the same IP all the time. That might be true of business users, but home users might be coming from dialup or broadband using PPPoE or DHCP.
;)
Oops, sorry, you're right. It would only work for the same "connection session". I guess that's why I'm not a network admin.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
From Parent..`Cookies aren't evil. They're legitimate tools that are quite useful.. If you want to make your computer extremely safe, just unplug the network..
But from TFA, `cookies are used for..Collecting personal information like names, addresses and phone numbers of users.
If the world was full of Jehovah Witnesses (like me) i would never update a Windows machine, or install anti-spy/virus software, i would do online banking and shopping like a pro.. but then there was Cain..
The paranoia around cookies is a little overblown. Using cookies for login is fine. Using cookies to maintain application state is crappy design, but also harmless to the user.
Marketing, though, is essentially parasitic. I just deleted all my cookies, and deleted the crap out of the Flash data store. Take that, corporate slime.
-cbare
It would be horrible if all the cookies from those nice folks at doubleclick etc. somehow got cross linked with other files on my drive. Why, when they went to help me understand my marketing needs by peeking into my cookie stash, they might end up accidently slurping down the_shaggs-my_pal_foot_foot.mp3 or something.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Add makers like having a long tern trace on what adds you click on.
When I logout all my cookies go to god. So at most they get one session of cookies. Note some add sites don't get any cookies from me due to filters.
This is a response to popup or pop under adverts. If a site gives me pop up or pop under I block them from being able to create cookies. Yes I do run add block but some sites require me to have popup on to get into them and sometimes I forget to turn it back off.
For anyone who want to join me in firefox its under tools-options tab secuitry cookies exceptions to block out partical sites only. And set you keep time to until browers closes and from site only(this sometimes stuffs sites up)
Some one a nice black list project you create pop up or pop under you will not have the right to cookies. Yep lets there wish for information to get what we want.
Back in the days of obnoxious telemarketing calls, every once in awhile I would get a call asking if I would agree to participate in a survey. I would respond to that I would be more than happy to - if I am going to paid to participate. That ended the call real fast.
My reasoning was simple enough: the person calling me is being paid to make the call. The company that is paying that person's salary is being paid by whomever commissioned the survey, and so on up the line. Seems to me I'm finding myself at the bottom of the totem pole, but ultimately, I'm the most important part of the survey taking process. No data to collect, no survey results.
My view of cookies is pretty much the same. I don't mind cookies who's sole purpose is to set specific preferences for features offered by the site I visit. My problem is with the so-called "third-party" cookies, who's purpose is to collect individual data without my expressed consent. Companies like Doubleclick represent in their privacy policy that such information is collected anonymously and I am not personally identified, but that's not the point. It's not anonymous to me.
As far as anyone else is concerned, my time is valuable. How I choose to spend it is my business, not theirs. I have no problem with any company that wants to collect marketing information about me, or my surfing habits, or anything else a marketing firm may find of interest. But my time is valuable and I choose to charge for the use of my time, particularly, as is the case of online marketing firms, EVERYONE is being paid - except me.
From the article: "Marketers, meanwhile, counter that cookies serve plenty of useful features consumers may not realize -- such as automatically filling in a username on a site that requires logging in, or helping a weather site remember a ZIP Code so that it can show a local forecast on return visits."
But thats precisely what marketers DON'T use cookies for. No money for them in that. It's a flagrant deception and smokescreen: trumpet the "proper" innocuous use of cookies and ride on the coattails so that the public perception of cookies is they are actually a good thing - therefore ALL cookies must be good. Gotcha.
I simply refuse to use a web browser without having Privoxy in place as my HTTP proxy. By default, I configure Privoxy to disable all cookies, incoming and outgoing (as well as all ads). If a site absolutely requires cookies (and I am unwilling to do without that site, such as the New York Times online), then I will whitelist the site in Privoxy.
I just can not praise Privoxy highly enough.
"Logoff! I don't trust that cookie shit."
- Tony Soprano
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
That is extraordinarily useful. I'm surprised that the auhor hasn't linked this to the MozDev page.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
...for those who haven't experience FFX cookie-munching goodness yet:
And there's a password manager for handling authentication to sites (such as Slashdot) for which you don't chose to retain a permanent cookie.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Doesn't happen. You can remember the setting for a given site. Usually this means your first few days of surfing involve a fair bit of swotting cookies, but after that, it's pretty smooth sailing.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
"Log Off, That Cookie shit makes me nervous!"
Cookie monster is already teaching us all we need to know... Cookies are a sometimes food
Unless it's tracking something like a login and only if it's from the originating site should one eat a cookie. Not an aytime food like when they want to track you all across the web!
--Shemnon
I can understand why on-line purchases need cookies, but I find that they have no reason to be on my machine after the transaction is completed. With Mozilla, I allow session cookies. I have no problem with cookies, but when I note that they expire in 1969 (whatever that means) I delete them. Periodically, I go to the cache and delete cookies that have accumulated while I was allowing cookies.
If cookies came as text messages, or asked first, I would be much more trusting, but some cookies have been as much as two full pages of text characters. I would like to have cookies ask me if I would allow a cookie to be placed that remains only while I am viewing the web site, and that tells me when it is being removed. I also want to know what it will be used for, and I want to refuse cookies that are not needed for the particular transaction.