Lawsuit targets use of HTML 5 client-side storage as cookie substitute for user tracking from Noah Mendelsohn on 2010-09-17 (www-tag@w3.org from September 2010)

From: Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:50:46 -0400
To: "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
Message-ID: <4C92BB66.1050001@arcanedomain.com>

Awhile ago we were discussing the fact that cookies have certain idiomatic 
uses for things like session management and user tracking that seem not to 
be quite the same as the main-path use cases for HTML 5 client-side 
storage.  I think the lawsuit mentioned in this article [1] is interesting 
as a leading indicator of the ways that the lines will blur in ways that 
cause real trouble for real users.  In this case, as I understand it, there 
is an allegation that client-side storage was used to create a tracking 
mechanism that would persist even when the user had explicitly deleted cookies.

Noah

[1] 
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/html5-safari-exploit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Received on Friday, 17 September 2010 00:51:16 UTC