That's a bizarre way to look at things. The good news is you can very easily make this your reality by changing a setting in your browser. There are tons of re

That's a bizarre way to look at things. The good news is you can very easily make this your reality by changing a setting in your browser. There are tons of reasons why "read-only" could make use of cookies. Here are a few, using your ecommerce example: 1) A/B test 2) General site analytics, to see how many unique visits your shop gets 3) More detailed conversion analytics to figure out things like the value of a visit, how long someone takes before making a purchase, knowing the origination of all conversions, etc. 4) Remembering viewed items so they can be promoted on a future visit 5) Displaying a "Welcome back" message to second time visitors If you don't do these things you will be beaten by people that do. eCommerce might be the absolute worst example you could have come up with for situations where cookies are not needed.