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If you don't want to be tracked with a long-term cookie just configure your browser to not accept long-term cookies or to delete all cookies on shutdown. Proble
by gst 16y ago
If you don't want to be tracked with a long-term cookie just configure your browser to not accept long-term cookies or to delete all cookies on shutdown. Problem solved.
- joelanman 16y agoI don't think most people would know how to do that, or even that you could.
- gst 16y agoI think most people would perfectly be able to do this, they just don't care. So why force privacy on them if they don't care about privacy? Even with this warning message I guess that 99% of the users will just click it away without reading it.
- wladimir 16y agoNot having the technical expertise does not mean not caring about privacy. A lot of technical people make that mistake. The users click it away without reading it because they don't understand it. Hence, people might feel that a level of privacy should be provided by law, not by optional technical doodads.
- blub 16y agoEven if they didn't care, it doesn't mean that it's socially desirable to have websites track users. It's certainly desirable for website owners though...
- joelanman 16y agoYou think most people understand the concept of cookies in the browser and how to change the settings for them? Maybe people don't care about privacy as an abstract concept, I think people do care about possible outcomes - say my partner borrows my machine and starts seeing ads for the surprise holiday I was planning.
- blub 16y agoI think it's the responsibility of the website to do the best that it can to protect the user's privacy, especially for those that don't know what a cookie is or does. On the contrary, most websites do the minimum they can get away with and try to squeeze every bit of data for profit. Those companies can cry all they want but they get ZERO sympathy from me. I'm sick of having to install three extensions to counter their hostile behaviour towards my privacy.
- al_james 16y agoYou don't like websites earning money for providing you with free content?
- furyg3 16y agoThis is a fallacy. A site's business model is it's own responsibility.
- al_james 16y agoBe that as it may, most of the sites I (at least) enjoy every day use the free content for advertising model. Very few of the sites would be able to make the transition to another business model that did not rely on advertising.
- furyg3 16y agoBut that point (that sites give away free content for advertising) doesn't have much to do with blub's point (that many sites use hostile, non-privacy friendly tactics for advertising). Basing your site revenue on advertising doesn't require trackig across sites/domains, supercookies written in flash, circumvention of user-defined browser privacy settings, etc (which is probably what blub is talking about). Honestly it doesn't even require cookies or retaining IP logs, though I don't think anyone here is arguing that those are malicious. That's why your comment is a fallacy. Websites providing me content for free, and websites respecting the privacy of their users are not mutually exclusive concepts.
- Silhouette 16y ago> Problem solved. Not really. You can achieve similar dubious goals with various other techonologies that are not so readily disabled, or that are usually implemented independent of the browser itself anyway (e.g., "Flash cookies").