[2353] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: Smart Fine Print
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Brennen)
Tue Jul 9 03:31:58 1996
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 00:24:35 -0500 (CDT)
From: Michael Brennen <mbrennen@fni.com>
To: Nick Szabo <szabo@netcom.com>
cc: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199607082007.NAA23638@netcom.netcom.com>
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, Nick Szabo wrote:
> The main thing offensive about cookies and cookie sharing is not that these
> features link information about the user's usage patterns (some users care
> about this, some don't) but that they undertake this important
> activity without the user's knowledge or consent.
<much deleted>
On a DOS/Windows machine it is easy to prevent cookies before they ever
turn into dough. :)
Just edit the cookies.txt file to be empty (or delete it and touch it),
then set the read only attribute on the file. I wish I could say this is
cleverly ingenious of me, but it is not. I picked it up from someone
else, and it works. I went to doubleclick.net and ran around -- with nary
a cookie set. They may keep other info, but cookies seems rather critical
to their scheme.
-- Michael
