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."

Comments

Cookies off by default

[hawkeyeMI]

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.

cookieisms

[sl4shd0rk]

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.

Not just for ads

[stripmarkup]

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.

Cookeies are good except

[fermion]

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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.

Re:Also

[bigman2003]

I design a lot of intranet based applications. And I *used* to use cookies a lot to keep user information. It was easy, convenient, and accurate. I never had problems.

Then some whack job at my company started to tell everyone that cookies were 'dangerous' and they should block them. Of course then I started to get complaints that my systems no longer functioned. (I had it set up to notify the users what the problem was...not just throwing stupid errors.)

It was a total pain to reconfigure the systems to deal with url/form variables everywhere, instead of just using cookies. And now a lot of the user-friendly functionality is gone. "Why doesn't it remember who I am?" "Because you turned off cookies..."

Hundreds of hours of wasted time because one dork thought that cookies were spyware...and this is on an INTRANET site.

I really wish they could understand what cookies really are...

JavaScript enhanced navigation is perfectly viable

[GrungyLotG]

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)

Here's one example

[tkrotchko]

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.