Re: A rookie's query: Want to about Debian and the related
On Tue, 03 Dec 2013 22:28:31 +0630
AP <worldwithoutfences@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 03, 2013 11:56:34 AM Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>
> > Cookies themselves are not evil. It's how some marketers have used
> > cookies that is evil.
>
> Unless you did a bank transaction!
>
One would hope that no bank was stupid enough to include confidential
information in cookies. Every now and then, a browser turns out to have
a vulnerability that allows scripts to read cookies deposited by
someone else's website, and it seems unlikely this will ever stop
happening.
And as Jerry hints, there are companies who gain permission to leave
and read their own cookies on a range of legitimate websites, and the
marketing company's own database can then correlate different sites you
visit, with a view to placing targeted adverts.
For the most part, cookies contain fairly unimportant information,
often simply to keep track of the stage reached in a multiple-step
transaction. Many e-commerce (and banking) sites won't work if
cookies are refused altogether.
Firefox at least can be set to drop cookies when it closes, except
for sites specifically allowed to leave them, and can also treat
third-party cookies (generally the data-mining ones) differently from
the site's own cookies.
--
Joe
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