Re: cookie-free

Any site that stores your preferences (such as Amazon's "one-click") uses
cookies.

-- Dave Neal

At 01:15 PM 3/28/00 -0800, Allan Hunt-Badiner wrote:
>i certainly agree that cookies are not inherently the problem, and they 
>can be very useful.  unfortunately, they are at the center of a huge and 
>growing storm over privacy thanks to their abuse by ad agencies.  with 
>cookie-synchronization over a wide network, people who have their 
>cookies turned on are likely to be tracked and profiled as they move 
>around the web, and this info may well be matched with personal info 
>(despite DoubleClicks recent PR statements) and sold to an endless 
>string of third parties.  for the most part people don't know what 
>cookies are and when they hear they are being tracked around the web 
>(they are) they don't like it. 
>
>so while the problem is not cookies, there is a problem with sites that 
>require their use to have functionality, since a growing number of 
>users will likely be disabling them. it probably unrealistic to expect 
>users to be toggling between accepting and declining cookies and 
>editing their cookie files... this is why the media, including 
>Bllomberg, CNNfn, and many others are showing people (about 5 times a 
>day) how to disable them.
>
>btw- you don't need cookies to make purchases on Amazon, or most of the 
>bigger professional ecommerce sites, and while i lament the current 
>hatred of cookies (because they were such a nifty tool) i think it is 
>poor planning, and perhaps even poor net etiquette to require their 
>use at this point.
>
>--Allan
>
>

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