[3759] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: cookies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jacob Rose)
Mon Dec 9 13:02:45 1996
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 09:56:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Jacob Rose <jacob@whiteshell.com>
To: diane.ellison@asu.edu
Cc: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <32ABAA57.6C97@ix.netcom.com>
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
> QUESTION: Is cookie.txt the only place where cookies have been written
> on my disk? I'm using Netscape. Can I prevent all cookies, or
> am I limited to the display of the warning?
>
> I see cookies as an invasion of my private disk space. Can
> I hear some other opinions please.
They have legitimate uses; the question is whether you want the
convenience of stateful revisitation; that is, do you want to have to
remember passwords to retrieve any customization (by which I mean any
personal or personalized data, like for instance map locations or routes
of interest on a mapping/routing site, or an e-mail box on a discussion
site, etc), or do you want your machine to automatically handle
"reminding" the web site of your previous activity there. There can be
abuses of cookies, but I personally feel that for a serious web user, they
have great potential to simplify use of the web and reduce the amount of
time spent repeating oneself (eg, performing the same searches) and
fumbling (eg, forgetting your password on a site with a login).
(Does anyone have a better word for it than "stateful revisitation"?)
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Jacob Rose All you and I must agree upon is peace.
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