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.
C is for cookie, it's good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with C.
It's a "workaround" for screwing up people that actually bother to delete cookies.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
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
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
"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.
Nah, it's a Flash function (Local Shared Objects) that behaves like cookies and can replace them. Lucky us, Firefox already has an extension to delete these suckers
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler