Re: errata for cookie spec

Benjamin, you wrote:
>This needs to be strengthened. This is *ALREADY* a major problem,
>with a number of 'banner services' such as 'doubleclick.com' currently
>exploiting inlined images to track people across domains. Perhaps
>something like 'User agents MUST NOT allow the setting of cookies
>on inlined or embeded objects if the enclosing document and the inlined or
>embedded object would be precluded from directly sharing a cookie by the
>other domain exclusion rules.' should be added to 4.3.2.

I think this is a little strong.  I would prefer something like: 'By 
default, user agents MUST NOT allow the setting of cookies on inlined or 
embedded objects if the enclosing document and the inlined or embedded 
object would be precluded from directly sharing a cookie by the other domain 
exclusion rules.  User agents SHOULD allow turning off this option for the 
cases where cross-domain cookie sharing is appropriate.'  (Off hand, I don't 
know of any cases of appropriate cross-domain cookie sharing, but these may 
come up in an Intranet environment.)

BTW, the silent rejection of cookies, esp. by domain name, is a good idea.
======================================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher                   Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com                   Indianapolis, IN

Received on Thursday, 6 February 1997 09:53:44 UTC