How do you balance between protecting your browsing history from marketers and surfing quickly and efficiently?

May 13, 2004 1:13 PM

Web browser cookies. Is it worthwhile to examine each one as it comes, or is the average person who fears cookies from unknown sources really wasting their time? Please attack or defend this. How do you find the balance between protecting your browsing history from marketers and surfing quickly and efficiently? Not looking for shaving tips.

This is on my mind because I've been using the Opera browser, and I have it set to query before accepting each cookie. With some sites, I end up sitting there, hitting "refuse" ten times or more before I get through all the queries. Are there other people who actually sit there and do that? And if so, why? My question is partly about the technology, and partly about the way that people can/do/should use the technology to their own benefit. And beyond that: is there a particular set of browser settings that is considered the way to go for most geeks? I see people online get really up in arms about style sheets and javascript, when the average surfer has no idea what these things are (I know what style sheets are, and have a very general idea about javascript). Is the average person missing out on a crucial battle that they will someday regret not fighting, or is attentive user-side modification of the browsing experience mostly a game for elitists who are looking for things to be critical about?

posted by bingo to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I've found that a good balance between helpful cookies (site logins, preferences, etc) and marketing cookies (attached to banner ads, etc) is to only allow them from the originating web site. It's an option in Firefox, and it may be in Opera as well. I've noticed that my cookie list doesn't get clogged with doubleclick.com entries, but useful things like site logins still work.

Almost every time I've heard someone be critical of cookies or Javascript, it's usually your slashdot-type: the neo-luddite Unix user that uses lynx in textmode to use the web. They're disappearing, slowly.
posted by zsazsa at 1:43 PM on May 13, 2004

It's really not necessary to be cautious about cookies at all: the only time your browsing history can be tracked (the most common claim) is if two or more sites were to use the same ad company (and so the same ad cookie).

The ridiculous part is that the ad company could do this history-tracking just as easily, if it wanted to, by looking through its server logs. Cookies do not make you any more vulnerable to anything (unless you do something really silly like somehow sharing them over a peer-to-peer network, in which case someone might be able to log in to a site as you).

Most ad cookies are only there to stop you seeing the same ad too many times, or other similar uses. You can always just flush them all out every day or so if you're really paranoid. There's no need to set the browser to let you accept/refuse each one individually.

The Motley Fool's page is absolutely correct.

Oh, and zsazsa: IE6 can also block third-party cookies only (it does it by default, I believe), as part of Microsoft's P3P thingy (double-click the little eye in the status bar if you see it).
posted by reklaw at 1:59 PM on May 13, 2004

I just go through my cookies once in a while (in firefox) and remove ones from ad sites, with "don't let removed sites add new cookies" checked.
posted by duckstab at 2:30 PM on May 13, 2004

"....... protecting your browsing history from marketers...."

I think you first need to ask yourself why you need to protect your browsing history from marketers. Part of Darpa's TIA program was geared towards taking this information and including it in a file the government would keep on you. And chances are with many of the links which end up on MeFi there is a good chance the FBI would find a few things in your history to warrant further investigation.

But, and it's a big but, a marketer can only track your visits to sites that run it's ads, and TIA would be just as likely to use raw server logs. So cookies may be the least of your web privacy worries. Marketers only want to track you so they can serve you ads you might be interested in.

There are many reasons to be paranoid about cookies. I haven't found any that hold water once viewed rationally. If bad people want to track your history there are better ways.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:04 PM on May 13, 2004

Are there other people who actually sit there and do that? And if so, why?

Yes and I don't know. Especially given I can't stand people who complain about cookies like they're Fifth Columnists. Then again, there is this Firefox bug.
posted by yerfatma at 4:06 PM on May 13, 2004

Huh. I just delete all cookies, the cache, and the recently downloaded list at the end of each session. I have my history set to expire after 1 day because in Firefox, if you set it to zero, it won't track links clicked in a session. So I can click a link on Google, go back to google, and the link is still blue. Very frustrating. There should be an option to "keep history for this session only."
posted by Grod at 4:47 PM on May 13, 2004

I have better things to do with my time than fret over cookies.
posted by mischief at 5:58 PM on May 13, 2004

Bingo, why don't you simply select "reject all cookies for this [server | domain]" and be done with it?

There are about fifty sites I visit regularly. About a dozen of them actually require a cookie to work (ie. MetaFilter needs one to log me in automagically). I've either accepted the login cookie or told Opera to accept cookies from the site.

Having set Opera set to remember/allow only those I care to, I then have Opera reject all cookies except those I've explicitly allowed. Most sites still work, and when there's a site that absolutely will not work, I can always re-enable cookies and tell Opera to delete them when I leave the site.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:30 PM on May 13, 2004

the neo-luddite Unix user that uses lynx in textmode to use the web. They're disappearing, slowly.

No we're not.

Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!
posted by sequential at 8:48 PM on May 13, 2004