Death of Cookies, Spyware Greatly Exaggerated? 498
securitas writes "The New York Times' Bob Tedeschi interviews several Internet marketing leaders who debate recent reports that Internet users are deleting cookies en masse and causing serious problems for advertisers. Among the interviewed is Eric Peterson, co-author of the Jupiter Research report that claims 39 percent of Internet users delete cookies. Slashdot has recently had stories about this supposed trend in June and July. A shorter version of the article at IHT. Who is telling the truth and who is deleting cookies? Are you?"
Adblock (Score:2, Insightful)
Delete on exit (Score:2, Insightful)
Anti-Spyware deletes cookies (Score:2, Insightful)
The article is mentions the rise of anti-spyware and how it usually cleans up suspect cookies.
From my experience with average users, clients, co-workers and family, most users have no clue what the anti-spyware is actually doing, they just follow along blindly. Personally I think this a great improvement over the truely clueless who don't practice safe browsing of any sort.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a challenge for all the companies (and individuals) out there who think it's perfectly acceptable to track and profit from every personal detail you can get your hands on of the people who interact with you. I'll let you track and profit from everything I do if you let me track and profit from everything you do. Complete discloser in both direction. Anything less is unacceptable.
I think there is an even better solution. The only reason I have a problem with the whole cookies thing is that what is being taken from me has a commercial value. If the people collecting my preferences can sell them to larger companies or profit by them by tailoring product lines and advertising, then money is being exchanged for my opinion.
If money is being exchanged or made from my opinion then the one individual that most deverves some or all of that financial gain is the original owner of the opinion/preference (me). However, through the cookies scheme, I'm the only one not getting paid.
If I own something that has value and someone else takes it and prevents me from profitting myself from it, that is theft, plain and simple. I don't want someone else's prefences in exchange for mine. I want the monetary value of my opinion.
Re:Kewkies good (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
And how do you figure you "own" the information? You visit site X, doesn't the list of people who visit site X belong to site X? Do you "own" the fact that you drive to work every morning at 8am? Do you "own" the fact that I saw you walking your dog in front of my house this morning? Did the traffic reporter steal from you when he reported the congestion you were stuck in? Did the newscaster steal from you when he reprted the headcount of the "Million Moron March"?
You want to block cookies, fine. I'm sure you accept the consequences of your actions, no problems. The the concept that someone who is taking the effort to aggregate the behavior of millions is stealing from you personally is stupidity.
Anyone NOT deleting their cookies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone just not give a damn? I mean, everyone's up in arms about privacy, and these lofty ideals of how it should be protected, etc. Just come out and say it. You don't want anyone else to see what porn sites you've been to.
Personally, I don't care about cookies. I don't have many illusions of privacy to begin with. I'm just non-egotistical enough to know that no one really cares about what sites I go to, as an individual.
They want to track my usage and habits? Fine. Throw me in a demographic, and call it a day. Use me as a statistic. Whatever.
Is everyone here paranoid, or do I have any fellow compatriots in the nation of apathy?
Re:Kewkies good (Score:3, Insightful)
I also agree with the AC who said that the vast majority of 'average' users don't even know what cookies are, let alone block or delete them.
-Rick
Re:No, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
i went through a no-cookies allowed period a couple of years ago and i quickly found something out: they're actually useful and in a lot of cases, dare i say it, desireable.
call me lazy but i actually like my login forms prefilled (name only, of course). i like my template preferences recorded. when i go to ecommerce site 'x' i honestly find it convenient to see what i bought on my last trip.
and, above all, i want to be able to maintain sessions on a lot of sites. increasintly, if you don't have cookies, holding a session is impossible (unique id's on the getline are going the way of the dodo) and, increasingly, sites want you to maintain sessions to do anything useful.
Re:I usually don't delete cookies ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It must suck being only able to get 13 basic channels. What kind of antenna are you using?
Yes, this was said with tongue-in-cheek, but if you have any sort of digital cable (or cable television at all for that matter), they know exactly what you're watching, for how long, and what channels you switch to, and at what intervals.
Sure, they might not yet be able to tell when you get up and work on your motorcycle in the garage for 2 hours while the TV is on in the house, but soon enough they'll be able to do that too.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
As a Slashdot reader who routinely removes all cookies, I don't have a problem with people that delete cookies for whatever reason it is. I do, however, find it a tad bit troubling that you feel that people are tracking your every, personal move. With some spyware and other slightly less benevolent sites, this may be the case, but in most of the cases there are no direct links to you as an individual.
I should probably disclose the fact that I work in the marketing department of a very large ad agency, so in that sense I may be a bit biased. That said, habbit watching really is harmless to say the least, and usually useful, even when it has absolutely no ties to the name or identity of an individual.
You see, advertisers are NOT interested in pissing off the customer. Believe it or not, most advertisers would very much want to see happy customers, not pissed off ones. That's part of the entire reason why user habbits are recorded. Simply to gather trends, likes and dislikes, and hopefully provide products and services that better fit what the consumer wants, and removing what isn't wanted.
I don't pretend to believe that habbit tracking is a one-stop catch-all solution, or that there aren't annoying commercials, but the intent of such tracking and data gathering is explicitly to try and get people that are INTERESTED IN THE FIRST PLACE to get exposure to whatever they are selling, and NOT expose people that aren't. You see, one way or another, exposure to someone that isn't interested still costs the advertiser money, and may even lend to negative image reception. Not a good thing. What we would ALL like to see is ads we're interested in seeing, and none that we're not. The reason people are a bit pissed over ads is because it's something they don't want, and could care less about.
You do have the freedom to remove these cookies, mess with their content or whatever. You're not obligated to feed data. However, to say that all cookies and data collection is evil, is naive at best and most likely ignorant. Without such forms of tracking, be it on the web or in real retail outlet, you would likely end up with a bunch of stores that don't carry what you want, and have trouble finding services you're interested in.
Of course, these comments are probably not terribly appreciated on
Poor, poor advertisers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mangage THIS, yuppie scum! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hear, hear.
Of course, you could just not show the annoying floating, animated ads to begin with -- that would improve the user's experience even more. In fact, one has to wonder why you're showing them in the first place, since your users hate them!
The stupidity! It burns!
Re:Delete them daily (Score:3, Insightful)
Look... If a marketer wants to somehow make money off me making posts on
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
The number of people who visit site $x belongs to site $x. Any identifying information about those people belongs to the individual people who visit the site.
The fact that you saw "someone" walking "a dog" in front of your house this morning is fairly innocuous. Be very careful, though, when you start identifying who, or whose dog.
A good body of privacy law will be based on the notion that any and all identifying information about me, belongs exclusively to me, and my not be used, published, stored or distributed without my express written consent. Nothing that falls short of that standard is adequate.
Re:Firefox and Google (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, slashdot.org can leave me all the cookies they want. Mmmm, cookies.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you are getting paid. You get to use the website. Unless of course you'd like to pay for each time you click on a hyperlink?
Hosting a large website can be expensive, so I don't really object to SOME advertising / cookies. As long as the information is reasonably harmless to me, and the ads not too intrusive, I consider it fair.
You ARE getting paid (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover, when you visit a site and someone makes a cent or two off of information about you you're almost always being reimbursed for it.
Almost all of the non-subscription entertainment sites make money off ads. Online retailers can offer lower prices because the info they gather from customers makes them a company with better profit margins.
Maybe they're not handing you a check, but it's not like you're in a sweatshop or anything - nothing you mentioned sounds like telltale signs of an extractive economy.
Re:Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Credit card companies have been selling the personal information of their cardholders for years and it has not raised much of a cry. In fact, we PAY THEM for the privilege of carrying a credit card.
Grocery store loyalty programs are basically required unless you want to pay higher prices at the grocery store.
I just don't get why people get so worked up about their online privacy when their real world privacy continues to be sold, "accidentally released" and otherwise trampled and has been for years.
Sounds resonab..wait what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet you post it to slashdot for all to see for free. Possibly you've even paid for the privilege.
Oh Please (Score:1, Insightful)
Ironically, your rant on tracking must not apply to Slashdot, mr. "It doesn't come easy (695416)".
Conspiracy theorists always dream up wild conspiracies that would never apply to their own lame, mundane lives.