Re: Cookies - Raising Awareness

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:13 AM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:
> !
>
> If I am asked 'do you want to accept this cookie?' I would immediately ask back 'what is it tracking?'.  I have no idea what the right answer is....
>
> Turning off cookies is somewhat going completely incognito/untrackable;  kind of like wearing a stocking over your head, generic black pants and jacket, dark glasses, and doing all your transactions  using 'ransom notes' and unmarked, used, $10 bills.  it's a bit extreme.

I'd argue that it mainly breaks logins for you.

Tracking can be done without HTTP cookies, e.g. using flash cookies,
local storage, finger printing etc..

We're however currently experimenting with replacing the cookie prompt
with a more usable blocking mode. You can test it on Chrome's current
dev channel. When you block cookies, we'll collect both blocked and
accepted cookies (and other site data such as local storage). Click on
the blocked cookie symbol and select "show cookies etc..". This will
pop up a dialog that displays all cookies for the current web page,
and lets you create exceptions for accepting/blocking cookies from
certain domains. It's not yet perfect, esp. the creation of exception
doesn't give you any feedback, but what do you think about the general
approach?

-jochen

Received on Sunday, 25 July 2010 18:43:58 UTC