Death of Cookies, Spyware Greatly Exaggerated?

securitas writes "The New York Times' Bob Tedeschi interviews several Internet marketing leaders who debate recent reports that Internet users are deleting cookies en masse and causing serious problems for advertisers. Among the interviewed is Eric Peterson, co-author of the Jupiter Research report that claims 39 percent of Internet users delete cookies. Slashdot has recently had stories about this supposed trend in June and July. A shorter version of the article at IHT. Who is telling the truth and who is deleting cookies? Are you?"

Comments

Yes

[It doesn't come easy]

[...]who is deleting cookies? Are you?

Routinely and automatically. I don't need any help in remembering my ID, password, or credit card number, thank you. And I don't want any company tracking my every move on the net just so they can turn around and sell information about my personal habits, whatever those habits may be.

Here's a challenge for all the companies (and individuals) out there who think it's perfectly acceptable to track and profit from every personal detail you can get your hands on of the people who interact with you. I'll let you track and profit from everything I do if you let me track and profit from everything you do. Complete discloser in both direction. Anything less is unacceptable.

Re:Yes

[soma_0806]

Here's a challenge for all the companies (and individuals) out there who think it's perfectly acceptable to track and profit from every personal detail you can get your hands on of the people who interact with you. I'll let you track and profit from everything I do if you let me track and profit from everything you do. Complete discloser in both direction. Anything less is unacceptable.

I think there is an even better solution. The only reason I have a problem with the whole cookies thing is that what is being taken from me has a commercial value. If the people collecting my preferences can sell them to larger companies or profit by them by tailoring product lines and advertising, then money is being exchanged for my opinion.

If money is being exchanged or made from my opinion then the one individual that most deverves some or all of that financial gain is the original owner of the opinion/preference (me). However, through the cookies scheme, I'm the only one not getting paid.

If I own something that has value and someone else takes it and prevents me from profitting myself from it, that is theft, plain and simple. I don't want someone else's prefences in exchange for mine. I want the monetary value of my opinion.

Re:Yes

[SB5]

"I want the monetary value of my opinion."

Here's your two friggin' cents... Some people, I tell you!

Re:Yes

[BlogPope]

If I own something that has value and someone else takes it and prevents me from profitting myself from it, that is theft, plain and simple.

And how do you figure you "own" the information? You visit site X, doesn't the list of people who visit site X belong to site X? Do you "own" the fact that you drive to work every morning at 8am? Do you "own" the fact that I saw you walking your dog in front of my house this morning? Did the traffic reporter steal from you when he reported the congestion you were stuck in? Did the newscaster steal from you when he reprted the headcount of the "Million Moron March"?

You want to block cookies, fine. I'm sure you accept the consequences of your actions, no problems. The the concept that someone who is taking the effort to aggregate the behavior of millions is stealing from you personally is stupidity.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a challenge for all the companies (and individuals) out there who think it's perfectly acceptable to track and profit from every personal detail you can get your hands on of the people who interact with you. I'll let you track and profit from everything I do if you let me track and profit from everything you do. Complete discloser in both direction. Anything less is unacceptable.

As a Slashdot reader who routinely removes all cookies, I don't have a problem with people that delete cookies for whatever reason it is. I do, however, find it a tad bit troubling that you feel that people are tracking your every, personal move. With some spyware and other slightly less benevolent sites, this may be the case, but in most of the cases there are no direct links to you as an individual.

I should probably disclose the fact that I work in the marketing department of a very large ad agency, so in that sense I may be a bit biased. That said, habbit watching really is harmless to say the least, and usually useful, even when it has absolutely no ties to the name or identity of an individual.

You see, advertisers are NOT interested in pissing off the customer. Believe it or not, most advertisers would very much want to see happy customers, not pissed off ones. That's part of the entire reason why user habbits are recorded. Simply to gather trends, likes and dislikes, and hopefully provide products and services that better fit what the consumer wants, and removing what isn't wanted.

I don't pretend to believe that habbit tracking is a one-stop catch-all solution, or that there aren't annoying commercials, but the intent of such tracking and data gathering is explicitly to try and get people that are INTERESTED IN THE FIRST PLACE to get exposure to whatever they are selling, and NOT expose people that aren't. You see, one way or another, exposure to someone that isn't interested still costs the advertiser money, and may even lend to negative image reception. Not a good thing. What we would ALL like to see is ads we're interested in seeing, and none that we're not. The reason people are a bit pissed over ads is because it's something they don't want, and could care less about.

You do have the freedom to remove these cookies, mess with their content or whatever. You're not obligated to feed data. However, to say that all cookies and data collection is evil, is naive at best and most likely ignorant. Without such forms of tracking, be it on the web or in real retail outlet, you would likely end up with a bunch of stores that don't carry what you want, and have trouble finding services you're interested in.

Of course, these comments are probably not terribly appreciated on /....

Re:Yes

[sporktoast]

Both accepting every cookie (as the marketers would prefer) and blindly deleting them all, (the simplest response) are just too extreme. The sweet spot for me is in the middle.

My cookie file is read-only at the file system level. It has fewer than 10 cookies in it, all of them hand filtered. This effectively makes every other cookie a session-based cookie, without having to to be nagged about it every time.

Each time I come across a site that offers me the opportunity to remember my login, I consider whether to add it to the list. I explore the site, to see whether it is actually worth it. I inspect the cookie for what else it contains, and maybe it goes in.

Outside of that, I have the usual Preferences-based options selected for security. (Allow from originating site only, etc.) I also hand-edit cookies like Google's to nullify unnecessary GUIDs. On a few of them, (Slashdot, NYT) I actually delay the expiration date so that I don't have to fiddle with them every year.

I'd say that I add maybe one new cookie a year, and update another one to accomodate some site's change in cookie format.

Re:Yes

[Phred T. Magnificent]

The number of people who visit site $x belongs to site $x. Any identifying information about those people belongs to the individual people who visit the site.

The fact that you saw "someone" walking "a dog" in front of your house this morning is fairly innocuous. Be very careful, though, when you start identifying who, or whose dog.

A good body of privacy law will be based on the notion that any and all identifying information about me, belongs exclusively to me, and my not be used, published, stored or distributed without my express written consent. Nothing that falls short of that standard is adequate.

Re:Yes

[Bad to the Ben]

However, through the cookies scheme, I'm the only one not getting paid.

Yes, you are getting paid. You get to use the website. Unless of course you'd like to pay for each time you click on a hyperlink?

Hosting a large website can be expensive, so I don't really object to SOME advertising / cookies. As long as the information is reasonably harmless to me, and the ads not too intrusive, I consider it fair.

Re:Yes

[dajak]

If I own something that has value and someone else takes it and prevents me from profitting myself from it, that is theft, plain and simple.

: The concept that someone who is taking the effort to aggregate the behavior of millions is stealing from you personally is stupidity.

It's just as nonsensical as the concept of advertisers losing money if people delete cookies. Or the concept of losing money on non-sales because of piracy. No money is changing hands, and no goods are stolen. Just business models that reach the end of their useful life.

Re:Yes

[DeusExLibris]

So, is this the deal that you have with your credit card company, grocery store, movie rental company, etc? My guess is that you don't and yet continue to use these services. Worse yet, these companies have personally identifiable information about you (unlike the anonymous tracking cookies used by advertisers). So, why is your net activity sacrosanct?

Credit card companies have been selling the personal information of their cardholders for years and it has not raised much of a cry. In fact, we PAY THEM for the privilege of carrying a credit card.

Grocery store loyalty programs are basically required unless you want to pay higher prices at the grocery store.

I just don't get why people get so worked up about their online privacy when their real world privacy continues to be sold, "accidentally released" and otherwise trampled and has been for years.

40% of the market is a problem

[Thanatopsis]

If 40 % of the market is deleting their cookies (no doubt as part of a regular anti spyware cleaning) that's a problem no matter what spin you put on it.

Re:40% of the market is a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ironic. He gets labeled informative and doesn't tell why it's a problem.

I don't see any problems, aside from advertising dollars drying up. But that's a moot point considering bandwidth is so cheap and if you want to throw up some kind of large, bandwidth consuming site you can generally run it on donation. That, and anywhere that has a decent product or service seldom needs to advertise it and when they do they don't make the big bright flashy "YOU WON A FREE PIECE-OF-SHIT" bouncing all over the screen in a flash ad game bullshit.

I hate advertising. I hate the way it advertises to women to destroy their bodies and then lie about who they are, I hate the way it advertises to men to be shovanistic dominating fucks, I hate the way it exploits need and social trust to enslave people into a process of consumption, I hate the way it educates kids about using their products for percieved, non-existant needs.
I hate the way the marketing books are written from a psychologists point of view.

Marketing works upon the communist dogma; build 1000 tracters, 1 works, rebuild the other 999 and get another working tracter, then do it again. You advertise to a kid to eat unhealthy food and watch TV, and to partake in stimulation culture. 15 years later, they're fat, unhealthy, and they're depressed becuase they can't stimulate themselves enough to get happy again (true happyness comes from controlling your wants). So you fix the situation with antidepressants, lyposuction, and a new diet and motivate them with images of supermodels and after even more money, they're to that level again. They become stupid, get pregnant, fake marrage, then what's the solution to that? Diapers, house, carpeting, divorce lawyers...and the kids get left infront of a television the whole time.

    Why? Because it destroys people. Even if I like something, I still hate advertising because once you're sold it becomes redundant.

Someone who does marketing is incapable of telling the truth. At least a lawyer can try.

I love cookies

[Sodki]

Cookies are delicious delicacies.

Re:I love cookies

[eth1]

I know, I deleat them all the time!

Re:I love cookies

[Analog4ever]

And here's some Cookies to Love

INGREDIENTS:

* 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 cups butter, softened
* 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
* 4 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)


Bake at 375F for 10-12 minutes

I, for one, don't bother with cookies anymore

[BlackCobra43]

I simply deleted all my cookies, visited every site I *want* a cookie from and then set my cookies to be read-only. Worry-free AND all the benefits of good cookies!

Re:I, for one, don't bother with cookies anymore

[Jugalator]

Yeah... The same worry-free experience while still allowing cookies where you want them can be set up in Firefox like this:

To allow new cookies
(when visiting new forums, etc)

- Allow sites to set cookies = on
- Keep cookies = ask me every time (when asked, obviously don't accept the ad cookies, to 99% easily identifiable)

To allow modifications to cookies earlier allowed to be set, and block the rest
(the by far most common and dialog-free setting)

- Allow sites to set cookies = off

^--- This configuration works, because that setting does not disable cookie usage to 100%, but still keep cookies you've allowed before to be both read and modified. You can review which those are later via "View Cookies". I always thought Firefox documented this behavior poorly in the dialog. :-/

If something slipped in by you allowing too much, simply remove the cookies from the whitelist at "View Cookies" in Firefox. Cookies either not listed, or listed as "block" will be blocked by Firefox with "allow sites to set cookies = off", and the others listed as "allow" will always be allowed despite this setting.

I usually don't delete cookies ...

[maxwell demon]

... because I already don't let the browser set them.

Does the advertising industry also "lose" money because it cannot track if I am watching their ads on TV?

Re:I usually don't delete cookies ...

[hacker]

Does the advertising industry also "lose" money because it cannot track if I am watching their ads on TV?

It must suck being only able to get 13 basic channels. What kind of antenna are you using?

Yes, this was said with tongue-in-cheek, but if you have any sort of digital cable (or cable television at all for that matter), they know exactly what you're watching, for how long, and what channels you switch to, and at what intervals.

Sure, they might not yet be able to tell when you get up and work on your motorcycle in the garage for 2 hours while the TV is on in the house, but soon enough they'll be able to do that too.

Re:I usually don't delete cookies ...

[hacker]

And which analog TV does send anything back through the cable...

The TV doesn't "send anything back", the tuner knows which channel you're tuned to. That signal strength can be detected on the provider's end. Call your analog cable provider and ask them (btw: there is no such thing as "analog" cable, its digital up to the point where your analog converter takes care of it, again, call your cable provider and ask).

Re:I usually don't delete cookies ...

[misleb]

They can tell if you have something hooked up, but they can't tell what channel you are tuned to. And there is most certainly analog cable. Digital cable encodes discrete packets of numerical data into MPEG frames. Analog cable doesn't require any such digital processing to be displayed.

-matthew

Re:I usually don't delete cookies ...

[Urchlay]

With digital cable and satelite the way it is now, can't these companies track what you are watching (given that you use their provided cable/satelite boxes) and, therefore, determine if you are tuning into their ads?

How can they tell if I'm in the kitchen making a sandwich, or in the bathroom... or for that matter, whether I'm even home? I know a lot of people who leave the TV on 24/7 (maybe muted) whether they're even in the same room or not...

For that matter, what if I turn off the TV itself, but don't bother to turn off the cable box? Can it "tell" whether the TV is on?

I'm in the "hate all ads" camp, BTW... I use Firefox's Adblock extension aggressively. It's my screen, my bandwidth, and my eyes... and if I'm not going to buy whatever they're selling (which I'm not), what difference does it make whether I look at the ad (some sort of tree-falling-in-forest thing?)

...but cookies can be useful. They're a tool, a mechanism for imposing state on a stateless protocol. Like any tool, they can be used for good or evil... and like any client-supplied data, can be folded, spindled, and mutilated without the server's consent or knowledge.

If you really, really hate marketers tracking data, maybe you could start a "p2p cookie-sharing service". It'd create a pool of shared, effectively random cookies, and browsers could send a different one in each request... of course you'd need a way to stop it from sending garbage cookies for e.g. session cookies that you actually need...

This would be the WWW equivalent of people swapping frequent shoppers cards...

Cookie Monster says...

[nearlygod]

Cookies are a sometimes food.

Firefox...

[gowen]

The "Allow Cookies For Session", along with the Allow Persistent Cookie Exceptions in Firefox solve all my problems. Along with AdBlock and BugMeNot.

I guess that makes me a bad person.

Adblock

[culler]

Delete? Just deny them in the first place, Firefox + Adblock extension!

I choose

[mporcheron]

I set my settings in my browser to ask before saving a cookie, most I deny but some, for example, logins I allow. You'd be amased how many websites set a cookie every time you visit their website and how many times. Advertisments are the worst, because they always set several cookies per advert but now I've go into the trend of just blocking whole domains, I hate the feeling that some body is sitting at a computer monitoring how many different people are seeing his adverts/

Personally, i do.

[domipheus]

But not because of security concenns, it is mostly because I have got into a nervous habit of clearing my cache and cookies every day.

A few months ago this was a different story, seeing about 400MB of cache/cookies taking up around a gig on the hdd because the files were so small changed it; and I dont mind having to re-login to sites every time, it means I am less likely to forget my various passwords!

Delete on exit

[jla0]

I have Firefox setup to delete cookies on exit. Also, it only accepts cookies from originating site as well. Remind me why I should KEEP cookies again? Oh I know.. it's probably for Amazon to start charging me more because I'm "loyal" customer!

Re:Purge the evil

[maxwell demon]

Mozilla/Firefox can. Just tell it to set all cookies as session cookies.

Anti-Spyware deletes cookies

[H0p313ss]

The article is mentions the rise of anti-spyware and how it usually cleans up suspect cookies.

From my experience with average users, clients, co-workers and family, most users have no clue what the anti-spyware is actually doing, they just follow along blindly. Personally I think this a great improvement over the truely clueless who don't practice safe browsing of any sort.

Mangage THIS, yuppie scum!

[Le Marteau]

"So cookies are a really good thing for managing the user's experience" says a USA Today markedroid.

Clueless. Absolutly clueless. This goes straight to the heart of the matter. They can't understand why people don't want their 'experience managed'.

I can manage my own goddamned experience, thanks anyway. Keep your filthy paws offa me.

Re:Mangage THIS, yuppie scum!

[kevin_conaway]

Clueless? I don't think so.

The majority of their users probably DO want (or don't care about) their "experience managed". They most likely think that the small majority of people who oppose it will go ahead and block the cookies anyway.

I suspect the percentages of people deleting cookies are not people that are actively deleting them because they are worried about their privacy. Its most likely that the cookies are getting caught up in a spyware removal tool.

In short, they are saying: If you don't like them, delete them.

Re:Mangage THIS, yuppie scum!

[shadowspar]

Hear, hear.

For example, cookies help a computer limit how many times the user is exposed to annoying ads like a floating, animated message. Such "frequency caps," to use industry parlance, are common among publishers. "So cookies are a really good thing for managing the user's experience," she said.

Of course, you could just not show the annoying floating, animated ads to begin with -- that would improve the user's experience even more. In fact, one has to wonder why you're showing them in the first place, since your users hate them!

The stupidity! It burns!

Let's put it like this

[Moraelin]

Let's put it like this: when you have someone whose very revenue depends on "detecting wolves", they'll cry "wolf!" All the time. They'll cry "wolf" at the neighbour's "alsacian wolf" dog even. I'm talking about anti-spyware and other "security" companies. Do they delete cookies? Well, I briefly had McAffee installed, and among other problems (such as being a piss-poorly programmed POS) it did exactly that. It tried to protect me from all those supposedly dangerous cookies, storing such "personal details" as the session ID on some site. I'm not kidding. Using half the sites that required logon (such as Gamespy's Fileplanet) was suddenly impossible. So based on that I'd say the concern is genuine. But it's probably not the users going through the menus to delete cookies. Joe Average probably wouldn't even know or care what a cookie is. But Joe Average likely has some POS security software installed that deletes the cookies for him

Re:Purge the evil

[Exter-C]

Within firefox you can setup cookie control fairly well. There are also extensions that allow you to do even more things from what I have been told Although I have not verified the extensions.

Cookieculler

[Dr.Opveter]

I use Cookieculler to protect those cookies I value (cause not all cookies are out there useless) and I delete the rest frequently.

Re:Not that it would matter, but

[Dogers]

Some don't actually EVER expire..

Some, like Googles cookie, don't expire for ages!

(Googles cookie implodes some time around January 2039)

This is caused by Helpdesk.

[jidar]

Many many helpdesk employees at ISP's tell users to delete cookies. I worked helpdesk for awhile about 4 years ago and back then although sometimes it did help it was mostly snake oil. Some help desk employees at a large ISP did little else besides tell people to delete cookies and reboot. Regardless of whether it works or not the users have learned to do it on their own. A lot of calls these days will start with "I deleted my cookies already but it still doesn't work.."

Firefox has poor cookie management

[plover]

Out of the box (or out of the 'download' folder, I should say) Firefox has really poor cookie management. I have it set to prompt, but once I deny a site permission and realize I want to do business with them it takes many mouseclicks and a lot of stupid scrollbar searching to hunt down the cookieblock and delete it.

There are some cookie management extensions out there, but for "normal" people to better manage their privacy (or even to realize they have privacy right that they can manage) I'd like to see "prompt always, deny third party" turned on by default, and a cookie toolbar/rightclick option that allows you to accept/decline/delete them. As a matter of fact, that would be a nice option for the Firefox installer: a checkbox that says something like "[ ] Help me manage my privacy rights online." We could debate whether or not it should be on or off by default.

Or, weirder yet, what about something like the infamous Clippy? "Hi, I'm Foxy, and I'm here to help you with online privacy so you don't become a victim of identity theft, or a pawn of corporate marketing strategies!"

Anyone NOT deleting their cookies?

[llevity]

I see all these posts about people who delete them every day, every time they close their browser, or they don't accept them to begin with.

Anyone just not give a damn? I mean, everyone's up in arms about privacy, and these lofty ideals of how it should be protected, etc. Just come out and say it. You don't want anyone else to see what porn sites you've been to.

Personally, I don't care about cookies. I don't have many illusions of privacy to begin with. I'm just non-egotistical enough to know that no one really cares about what sites I go to, as an individual.

They want to track my usage and habits? Fine. Throw me in a demographic, and call it a day. Use me as a statistic. Whatever.

Is everyone here paranoid, or do I have any fellow compatriots in the nation of apathy?

Re:Anyone NOT deleting their cookies?

[HunterZ]

Is everyone here paranoid, or do I have any fellow compatriots in the nation of apathy?

You do, but they're all to apathetic to bother replying...

Re:Kewkies good

[RingDev]

I agree whole heartedly. Cookies got a bad name in the late nineties and have never recovered from the uninformeds' position that they must be evil.

I also agree with the AC who said that the vast majority of 'average' users don't even know what cookies are, let alone block or delete them.

-Rick

Re:No, but...

[Frymaster]

I don't allow cookies in the first place;

i went through a no-cookies allowed period a couple of years ago and i quickly found something out: they're actually useful and in a lot of cases, dare i say it, desireable.

call me lazy but i actually like my login forms prefilled (name only, of course). i like my template preferences recorded. when i go to ecommerce site 'x' i honestly find it convenient to see what i bought on my last trip.

and, above all, i want to be able to maintain sessions on a lot of sites. increasintly, if you don't have cookies, holding a session is impossible (unique id's on the getline are going the way of the dodo) and, increasingly, sites want you to maintain sessions to do anything useful.

Good cookies and bad cookies

[EXTmilky]

With deleting all cookies many people are doing themselves a big disfavour, because session IDs then mostly get embeded into URLs instead (= you loose the logging feature, while sites could still track you).

What's always left out in these discussions is the differentiation between good cookies and tracking cookies (especially long-lasting session ids). See also cookies(5). Lack of user education and bayesian cookie filters in browsers IMO.

Knee-Jerk Reaction

[BlkPanther]

You guys all talk about cookies as if the only thing they are used for is making advertisers more money.... The fact is cookies have a real and valuable use. They can track useful information for other kinds of applications. And most cookies (at least the ones I create in my web apps) do not contain user information, instead they contain a GUID key to a database record that contains non-personal information about that users session on the website.... The kind of stuff that is useful for the user, like what category they were last at when they added a product to their shopping cart, or what affiliate they entered our website through and various other such items. These thing make our website easier to use and pose to "privacy" issue to our users.

A simple way to do automated cleanup

[caudron]

All I did was write a simple script that cleans out my cookies and cache. I've set it to run daily on logout. Change $user to your username and $profile with your profile string and use it:

echo "drop firefox cache and history"
shred -u /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/Cache/*
shred -u /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/history.*

echo "grab all valid firefox cookies"
cat /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt |grep slashdot >/home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookiesnew. txt
cat /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt |grep mapquest >>/home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookiesnew .txt
cat /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt |grep mywebgrocer >>/home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookiesnew .txt
cat /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt |grep news.google >>/home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookiesnew .txt
cat /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt |grep netflix >>/home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookiesnew .txt

echo "get rid of all cookies not explicitly kept above"
shred -u /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt
mv /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookiesnew.t xt /home/$user/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/cookies.txt

echo "done"

Just add a new line for each cookie that you want kept in the "grab all valid firefox cookies" section just as I did (noting the > vs >> piping).

I mean, it works for me, at least. Why do I shred instead of rm? Because I'm one of the lunatic fringe that likes the idea of actually deleting files that I tell to be deleted.

Coupled with Firefox's AdBlock add-on, I'm pretty comfortable with my browsing experience.

You just..

[Marc2k]

You just can't publish and make a profit from information available regarding their CEO.

Poor, poor advertisers

[Blitzenn]

I feel so sorry for the advertisers, NOT! They can't track my buying habits and see what sites I frequent. Too f'ing bad! If they can't learn to keep stats on their end of the machine (server side), then perhaps they need better programmers and should start paying their own staff better. There is absolutely no need for an advertiser to keep information on MY machine unless they are trying to track me personally. That is over the limit, out of bounds, in my book. Cookies are great for login information and per session information containers as is noted in a number of comments here, but when advertisers abuse them by tracking my personal and cross session information, they create a problem. They made their own bed, now they have to deal with it. I find it hilarious that they are whining about not being able to try individual users and trying to spin it as a bad thing for users for them to lose this ability. They don't need personal/individual information. They can use their server side information just fine.

Delete them daily

[MobyDisk]

Cookies aren't evil. They are just misused, and misunderstood.

There's nothing wrong with using cookies to prevent me from having to logon to Slashdot 10 times a day. And there is nothing wrong with cookies telling Amazon.com that people who buy Movie X also like to buy Book Y. That is useful anonymous marketing information. I actually LIKE it when Amazon recommends things to me, because they are usually right!

The problem is when the cookie stays around for days and you never get a login prompt: that's a security problem. Or when marketers build long-term profiles on you, then try to grab identifying information from other sites you use.

I have Mozilla set to delete cookies every day, which seems to be the best balance. (Firefox unfortunately does not have this option).

Re:Delete them daily

[vertinox]

Or when marketers build long-term profiles on you, then try to grab identifying information from other sites you use.

Look... If a marketer wants to somehow make money off me making posts on /., reading webcomics and looking a pics of whiny cam girls on LJ all day, then more power to him. I just feel sorry for the poor sod who buys the data from him.

Firefox has poor cookie management

[oldmacdonald]

Out of the box ... Firefox has really poor cookie management. I have it set to prompt, but once I deny a site permission and realize I want to do business with them it takes many mouseclicks and a lot of stupid scrollbar searching to hunt down the cookieblock and delete it.

Yeah, what's up with this? Mozilla actually has a tools->cookies menu that lets you quickly block or unblock cookies from a site. Why doesn't firefox?

Re:No, but...

[advocate_one]

and, above all, i want to be able to maintain sessions on a lot of sites. increasintly, if you don't have cookies, holding a session is impossible (unique id's on the getline are going the way of the dodo) and, increasingly, sites want you to maintain sessions to do anything useful.

well... durr... that's what session cookies are for... doesn't ie support them then??? who really cares, Konq and Firefox do... and that means I'm happy ;)

Re:No, but...

[Jaseoldboss]

Here's what I do.

Get Firefox to turn ALL cookies into session cookies by deleting them "when I close Firefox" in options.

Then make exceptions for the sites you want to track you. I do this for /. so I don't have to log in everytime.

From the article;

This anticookie fervor also hurts the deleters, she says. For example, cookies help a computer limit how many times the user is exposed to annoying ads like a floating, animated message. Since when should you trust a site not to annoy you with ads, block popups and use Adblock and Flashblock.

"...So cookies are a really good thing for managing the user's experience," she said." If this was true, we'd all be installing adware on our computers to deliver 'interesting relevant and targetted' advertising to enrich our web experiences wouldn't we? Bah!

Re:No, but...

[Evil Grinn]

increasintly, if you don't have cookies, holding a session is impossible (unique id's on the getline are going the way of the dodo) and, increasingly, sites want you to maintain sessions to do anything useful.

For session tracking, cookies are now the standard, but there are other security precautions that can only accomplished by including a unique ID in every form.

Go read up about "session riding" or "cross-site request forgery". For example:

http://shiflett.org/articles/foiling-cross-site-at tacks

See the code sample near the end of the page, under "Force the use of your own HTML forms".

Re:Firefox and Google

[jahknow]

See, I do the same with Firefox... but DON'T allow Google to keep their cookie. Using Gmail means I have an account with them, and having an account allowed me to see that google is compiling a "search history" on me. They can still build a history based on my static IP address but I don't want to make it too easy. Maybe that's why their cookie expires in 2038!

That said, slashdot.org can leave me all the cookies they want. Mmmm, cookies.

Re:Not that it would matter, but

[letxa2000]

This counter will overflow (go negative) on January 19, 2038. By then, we will have moved that counter to a 64-bit number.

Yes, we will have completed that move on approximately January 18, 2038.

Delete 'em? Nope, I poison 'em!

[OpenGLFan]

About once a week or two I'll get a few idle minutes, playing with my laptop while making dinner, and I'll just start opening up cookies and changing the data in there. Not to try to impersonate someone else, but just as every person's duty to scribble nonsense on some moron's database.

It's fun. It probably doesn't do anything, but it kills a minute or two of time, and it's more fun than "bejewled".

You ARE getting paid

[Danger Stevens]

Absolutely right.

Moreover, when you visit a site and someone makes a cent or two off of information about you you're almost always being reimbursed for it.

Almost all of the non-subscription entertainment sites make money off ads. Online retailers can offer lower prices because the info they gather from customers makes them a company with better profit margins.

Maybe they're not handing you a check, but it's not like you're in a sweatshop or anything - nothing you mentioned sounds like telltale signs of an extractive economy.

Re:cookie swapping?

[Madcapjack]

Who needs to delete cookies? I just have a little program that overwrites the text with random text. Why? Well, spyware companies suck that's why. But you're not kicking them in the gut if you just delete the cookies. Nah, feed their databases with crap. That's what I say.

Re:No, but...

[revmoo]

More like leaving your keys in the car while it sits in a locked garage.

Block 3rd party cookies and allow the rest and you should have nothing to worry about. Unless you enjoy the paranoia.

Sounds resonab..wait what?

[zippthorne]

"I want the monetary value of my opinion."

Yet you post it to slashdot for all to see for free. Possibly you've even paid for the privilege. /. makes money from all the suckers who paid to read your post as well as the ads on the page whose impressions are generated by.. people reading your post.

Re:Tough luck for advertisers

[RingDev]

But then you are depending on those with money to share content. I worked with a site for a video game mod last year. Great site, no adds, wonderful content (and mod files sizes in the magnitude of Megs). Worked off of donations, a few bucks here, a few bucks there would cover the bandwidth needs. After a while, the site's popularity grew, some links from other very popular sites to this site drove the bandwidth and server load through the roof. The site admin bumped the server to a tougher server, which could handle it, and eventually the guy running the site had to pay for a much higher end hosting solution and bandwidth. That shot his relatively low bandwidth bill to way beyond that of what a part time pet project could justify. He started enforcing free registration, and added google adds, which helped, but the cost of thousands apon thousands of users downloading multiple files from 1 meg to 50 megs was extremely costly, even with 3 mirrors. He added more advertising to help cover the cost. And the site is still up today.

Acording to your point of view, he should not have taken any advertising, because it would push people away from his site, but had he not taken any advertisment, his site would be perpetually unreachable until no one visted it due to it's instability.

Advertising, whether you like it or not, is what allows people with limited budgets to maintain high bandwidth publications.

-Rick

Re:No, but...

[techno-vampire]

Since when should you trust a site not to annoy you with ads, block popups and use Adblock and Flashblock.

You and I have much the same way of dealing with ads. However, the idea is that if you are going to see ads, you should see a different one each time. That way, instead of having one product shoved under your nose over and over, you get one look at a large number of products. This increases the chance that you will find at least one of the ads useful and lowers the chance that you will get so fed up you block them all.

As I see it, you have two sensible choices. Either you block all ads or you allow the cookies. Blocking cookies and accepting ads just gets you bombarded with endless repititions of the same thing and that's the worst outcome.

Re:No, but...

[murukusu]

I'm only accepting cookies from few sites and blocking all but google's text ads. I must say that since I started to surf like this, my user experience has improved vastly.