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Renew
Online
You may now renew your annual membership dues online. Annual dues are $45.00.
By Geoffrey M. McLean,
McLean
Research Associates
Cookies, cookies, cookies everyone wants cookies. Well, almost
everyone. "What is a cookie anyway" and "Why do I care?" are two
questions I've been asked many times.
Cookies are an ingenious little mechanism for storing persistent
information about your relationship with a web site. Huh? I hear you
all collectively saying. A cookie is a piece of information that a
web site owner wants to store on your computer that they can keep
track of. For instance if I go to ReallyGreatBooksOnline.com, they
may want to store my customer number and my password on my computer
so that next time I visit them I don't have to manually enter it.
They may also store what books I've placed in my shopping cart in
cookies stored on my computer. Neat huh?
Cookies are insidious little things, though. I currently have some
180 or so cookies on my Linux computer. I've seen some people with
thousands. Here is an example of what one cookie looks like (domain
name changed to protect the innocent).
.yada.com TRUE
/FALSE1051266393AS197108-1-1015266613-1-1015266613_97109-1-1015266608-1-1015266608_97115-1-1015266734-1-1015266734_
Do you know what all those numbers are? Neither do I. And that is
why they are insidious. They could be anything. Some sites want to
track where you've been so they can develop a profile on you. They
can track just about anything they want to using cookies, and you
really will have no idea that they are doing it or what they are
storing in them.
In Windows Netscape, cookies are all stored in one file called
cookies.txt and in Linux they're in ~/.netscape/cookies (the ~ means
the users home directory). So I can see all of them in a plain text
editor. The same holds true in Windows where the cookies are stored
under the User directory in Navigator.
Under Windows Internet Explorer, things get a bit more complex
(naturally). Cookies are stored for Internet Explorer in individual
files under C:\Windows\Cookies. Each file contains a cookie from a
site.Can you stop eating cookies? Mostly. By default set your
browser to accept cookies but to prompt you whether to accept them
under the preferences menu item. Some browsers will allow you to set
options for each web site you visit. This is very convenient.
For example, I want the ReallyGreatBooksOnline.com site to track my
books I buy so they can recommend new releases to me. On the other
hand I don't want that really huge software company to track what I
look at or buy. So I never accept their cookies. If you do decided
to have your computer warn you, be prepared. Some sites flood you
with cookies.
I've spent as much as 15 minutes battling a barrage of cookies. The
only reason I bothered was that there was one small piece of
information I needed from the site. I won't be back there again.
If you still decide on accepting all cookies be vary careful. If you
have the option you should only accept cookies from the site you are
visiting. If you accept all you may get some surprising email.
Let me explain. If I visit ReallyGreatBooksOnline.com and they have
banners, the banners can set cookies. Now if by chance you are
visiting in the human reproduction area of the store, one of the
banners may be for a *ahem* site of ill repute, shall we say?
Next thing you'll know, arriving in your email could be lots
advertisements for adult-only web sites. A lot of these sites will
sell your information to each other, so you will get on a few
advertising lists you may not want.
There is relief in sight from all these cookies. The P3P Committee
(Privacy Protection Policy) of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
recently met and approved a new standard that will allow you to set
in your browser how much and what kind of information you will allow
to be captured using XML (eXtensible Markup Language - a more strict
and yet flexible web language vaguely similar to HTML). Even
Microsoft, as a participating member, agreed.
Unfortunately, I fear that greed has more to do with their decision
than anything else. Most browsers are older and do not support XML.
Thus you'll have to buy a more improved browser or upgrade your
operating system - in most cases to Windows XP which as I wrote in
earlier articles is designed to track your online travels.
One final note: go to your directory where cookies are stored and
check out the number of cookies on your system. You may be shocked.
It is safe to delete them, but you may find yourself having to
re-enter information on many web sites. If you find some from
doubleclick or ones from sites you've never visited -
Congratulations - you are now part of the largest online database
tracking web users. Check out the doubleclick.com web site and pay
close attention to their goals.
Big Brother is not just watching anymore - now he is actively
spying, gathering, and disseminating your personal information.
Accept only cookies you really want to - reject all others.