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Subject: Re: OT: Cookies (was: Re: Somewhat off-topic: Aureate Spyware hoax)

Author: Tina Long

Date: 16:53:59 03/24/00

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On March 24, 2000 at 07:09:34, Shep wrote:

>On March 24, 2000 at 06:15:29, Tina Long wrote:
>
>>
>>I have been on the net for 15 minutes and 11 (eleven!!) places I have never been
>>have tried to place Cookies in my computer.  Club Kasparov also tried to place a
>>cookie.
>>
>>Call me naive, I'd never heard of cookies until today, and I'm amazed &
>>disgusted.  I've never heard of these companies or websites & they're planting
>>"listening devices" in my computer.
>
>Don't be too paranoid. Cookies are no "listening devices" of any kind (i.e. you
>cannot compare them to installed software which makes connections to other
>websites on its own).
>Typically they are used to identify a client during a session on a website or to
>re-identify a recurrent visitor of a site. Except for occasional browser bugs,
>it is not possible for a site to read cookies set by another site (even if the
>other site resides on the same machine, as long as the domain name is
>different).

Thanks Shep, I am now understanding better, and maybe I was overreacting, but a
message such as:

Woof Woof (the guard-dog beeper) "TeenXXX.com is trying to place a Cookie on
your computer.  You have never visited this site."

upset & scared me, especially after several of them barked at me.

If CCC or GambitSoft etc have cookies that tell them I'm a customer etc, that's
fine by me.  It's anonymous stuff I fear, if they can plant cookies just because
I'm attached to the internet, then what else can they plant?

If I get some advertising searching bug from freeware I've downloaded, then
shame on them, but it's my risk in the downloading.

Thanks again,
Tina Long

>Sometimes an incorrectly configured webserver sets cookies as well, e.g. a
>cookie named EGSOFT_ID typically comes from Microsoft's IIS, or WEBTRENDS_ID (as
>set by clubkasparov.com) is set to allow WebTrends (a tool producing statistics
>on hits on a website) to produce a more detailed report, e.g. to distinguish a
>session (one user visiting the site and viewing 20 pages) from 20 page hits by
>20 individual users etc.
>
>There's just as many "myths" about cookies as there are about Javascript. Most
>of them are pure exaggeration.
>Being an online developer, I may be biased in favour of cookies, though. :)
>
>---
>Shep



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