{"id":1318,"date":"2011-04-13T13:15:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T17:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=1318"},"modified":"2011-04-13T13:15:51","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T17:15:51","slug":"cookies-not-the-kind-you-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/cookies-not-the-kind-you-eat\/","title":{"rendered":"Cookies – not the kind you eat"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"Charlie thinks we take cookies too \t\tlightly
\n<\/strong>I’ve read your opinion about cookies and I think you don’t realize \t\ttheir danger. My security program often warns me of threats and many of \t\tthem are tracking cookies. I think you’d do your readers a better \t\tservice by showing a little more concern about cookies. They’re not as \t\tharmless as they sound.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our answer
\n<\/strong>We’ll stand by our answer that cookies are not dangerous; they are \t\tsimply text files. They can’t execute (run), they can’t collect personal \t\tinformation from you and transmit it anywhere; they can’t infect your \t\tcomputer and they can be deleted just as easily as a text file or an \t\temail – no special software needed. Also cookies cannot track you across \t\tthe web. Cookies can track you from page to page within a site – or from \t\tsite to site provided those sites are owned by the same company. They \t\tcannot track you across multiple domains or across the web.<\/p>\n

Cookies have many legitimate uses. They can save user preferences for \t\tsites like weather sites where your location is required on multiple \t\tpages – and prevents you from having to continually re-enter your \t\tlocation. They allow you to configure your login page for Hotmail, \t\tGmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. Otherwise you’d have to keep resetting your page \t\tcolors, backgrounds, etc. They give web site owners specific information \t\tthat may help them improve their sites – and prevent you from seeing the \t\tsame ad multiple times.<\/p>\n

And no matter what cookies do or don’t do, the most dangerous part of \t\tcookies is taking your eye off the really dangerous things: key loggers, \t\tviruses, spyware, phishing sites, phishing emails, rootkits, malicious \t\tdownloads, malicious sites, piggybacked downloads (bundling), Trojans, \t\tbotnets, etc. Worry about cookies is like worrying about your coffee \t\tmaker at home when you’re walking down the most dangerous alley in the \t\tworst section of Detroit at 3:00AM; you have more important, more \t\tdangerous things to worry about like someone carrying a gun jumping you \t\tand causing you bodily harm. Don’t let the fear mongers scare you. \t\tCookies are the least of your worries.<\/p>\n

Security programs couldn’t make cookies sound dangerous enough so they \t\thad to think of a more ominous name. Some cool marketing guy thought up \t\tthe name “tracking cookies” – sounds much scarier than it is. A tracking \t\tcookie is still a cookie – just like a rose by any other name is still a \t\trose. One security program one-upped the others by detecting \t\t“tracking cookies”. This caused all the others, in order to stay \t\tcompetitive to identify “tracking cookies” as dangerous. I guess the \t\tgeneral public feels better if their security program finds something – \t\tthen they think it’s really working. We prefer our security programs to \t\tfind nothing – then we know they are really working.<\/p>\n

Charlie, we’ll stick with our assessment of \t\tcookies, because it’s right. And we’re right by telling our readers to \t\tbe concerned about the real threats on the Internet – there are a lot of \t\tthem, but cookies are not one of them.<\/p>\n

EB…do we have any more of those sugar \t\tcookies that lady from Moline sent us?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlie thinks we take cookies too lightly I’ve read your opinion about cookies and I think you don’t realize their danger. My security program often warns me of threats and many of them are tracking cookies. I think you’d do your readers a better service by showing a little more concern about cookies. They’re not as harmless as\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[340,346,341],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1321,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions\/1321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}