The conspiracy of "tracking cookie" paranoia

reply to post by Komodo


My best and most sincere advice is not to worry.

For 99.9999999% of the time you access a site and receive a cookie, the result will improve your web experience in one way or another.

For many sites, the cookie is used to remember your session from page-to-page and day-to-day. In most cases, there are enormous benefits and convenience to the end user because of this.

Even when it comes to advertising, you're almost always going to get better ads when you allow cookies. If the ad networks "sense" that you're blocking cookies, your impression will be passed down the line to the low-tier of ad providers... where flashing banners, talking smilies, and the occasional malicious ads lurk.


I've been on the web since before cookies were part of web browsers, and have never disallowed any. Nothing bad has ever happened... and I'm online several hours a day.

Cross-site profiling by companies such as Double-Click are not paranoia.
ATS may only know what I click on at ATS, but Double-Click would know every thing I do at every website they participate with.

That doesn't even include the various exploits, hacks, and creative vulnerabilities that exist out there.

In short, Trust No One. Delete all cookies after every session, delete all Flash LSO's too. That's not Paranoia, it's knowledge, and it's Policy.

Originally posted by harrytuttle
ATS may only know what I click on at ATS, but Double-Click would know every thing I do at every website they participate with.

That's not true. The know which ads you see (of the ads they serve), and on which domains you see them... and also on which ads you click -- if you click. Have you read their privacy policy?

That doesn't even include the various exploits, hacks, and creative vulnerabilities that exist out there.

Cookie-specific exploits are exceptionally rare, and typically associated with stealing user-sessions from open source blog and forum software.