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Cookies: not just in grandma’s kitchen anymore By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on May 6, 2004, in the Bay Mills News.
Throughout the ages, ambitious entrepreneurs have sought to make use and exploit new technologies for profit, often to the benefit of the public in general. The Internet’s ascension offered such an opportunity, but its free-form nature also meant that it was ripe to be plucked by marketers with ambiguous morals. Early Internet-based marketing efforts centered on direct marketing via newsgroup postings and e-mail and quickly moved to mass marketing, which gave us the joy that is spam e-mail. But as the technology improved, marketers found ingenious ways to better promote their products to potential customers. Advertisements on websites became common once page viewings could be easily tracked, but these ads remained either general or related to the page on which it appeared. Marketers, wanting a more comprehensive way of tracking Web users. At this point, enter the cookie. No one is really certain how the tag ‘cookie’ was coined, but it was Netscape Communications that invented the concept of depositing small amounts of information on a Web user’s hard drive. A cookie is actually a pretty simple text document, containing usually simple information such as the last time a Web user viewed a page, registration data for online forms, or even simple locator data like the viewer’s IP address. Limited to only 4,096 bytes, or letters, of data, a cookie file is too small to be used as a virus or trojan horse, being too small for such applications. However, privacy advocates view cookies as being potentially even more dangerous than any virus. Cookies have their limitations, being able to store only the information that a Web user provides. Also, cookies are generally only to be used by the web site that generates the file, but these guidelines are not going to stop an unscrupulous marketer from trying to mine cookies for more revealing personal information. Debate runs both ways on the topic of cookies, with large Internet-based advertising agencies arguing that their primary purpose for using cookies is to make sure that a Web user is not being shown the same ad over and over, thus allowing them to better target their marketing efforts. The privacy police, however, feel that cookies eliminate anonymity on the Internet, and being anonymous online one of the key draws for so many people. Other feel that privacy issues online are overblown. Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems told Wired Magazine in 1999 that consumer privacy issues are a “red herring,” adding that “[Y]ou have zero privacy anyway.” Although McNealy was roundly criticized for his remarks, even by the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, such attitudes are not uncommon when it comes to privacy issues. When Intel released their Pentium III processor, they included a serial number on the chip that could be accessed in order to help track user activity. Ironically, Intel reversed course on this action mere hours before McNealy made his now infamous remarks. Google, the popular Internet search engine, has released Gmail, there new free online e-mail service. The catch, however, is that the e-mail server will scan messages for keywords in order to place ads on the e-mail window that are theoretically related to the message. Even though marketers are trying to build the better mousetrap when it comes to online marketing, the consumers still have the first line of defense when it comes to privacy control. Most web browsers can be set to block or regularly delete cookies, and there are a variety of software packages — such as Ad-aware or Spybot, Search & Destroy — that can find and delete web cookies and other privacy threats. Also, websites such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) or Junkbusters.com provide information on protecting online privacy as well as steps that can be taken to make a computer more secure. Finally, online privacy ultimately rests in the hands of the individual user. However, one important point to keep in mind is that going online will probably never be anonymous again. The only way to be certain that your name does not go online is to not go online. But who would want that? • Mike Guilmette is a staff reporter/columnist with the Bay Mills News. His website can be seen at http://www.sigperl.com/. |
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Copyright © 2004, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
Once a new product or service hits the scene, some of the first people who will take it up will be those who ask the question ‘How can I make a buck with this?’ The Internet was most certainly no exception.
