Saturday, November 6, 2004
Cookies Are Not Spyware
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 11:00 PM
I've had two emails in the past week from Pocket PC Thoughts asking why we're distributing "spyware" onto their computers. We're not - it's that simple. What people are seeing is over-protective anti-spyware software treating normal cookies like spyware.
In this case, Avenue A (one of the third-party advertisers that serves up banners when we don't have our own paying ad) is doing nothing more than dropping a cookie on your machine. The cookie is like every other advertising cookie from DoubleClick and other large advertising agencies: it tracks what ads you've seen so it doesn't show you the same ad more than "X" times.
It's grossly irresponsible for these anti-spyware companies to treat cookies like spyware. REAL spyware is malicious, machine-hijacking junk that throw pop-ups on your computer, resets your start page, and all sorts of other ugly tricks. A cookie is a text file that has some non-personal information what banner ads have shown on certain sites. That's it.
Go ahead and open the cookie on your computer and you'll see it's harmless. Cookies are not spyware, no matter how hard these anti-spyware companies try to make them out to be. You have to realize that these guys are trying to sell their software too, and if they start blocking cookies as well, they give the perception that they're "protecting" you even more often. They have an agenda too - think about it. ;-)
It's also worth noting how many cookies are used - I deleted all my cookies yesterday, and in only 24 hours of Web browsing I have more than 50 on my computer. It's the way the Web works, but it's not spyware.
In this case, Avenue A (one of the third-party advertisers that serves up banners when we don't have our own paying ad) is doing nothing more than dropping a cookie on your machine. The cookie is like every other advertising cookie from DoubleClick and other large advertising agencies: it tracks what ads you've seen so it doesn't show you the same ad more than "X" times.
It's grossly irresponsible for these anti-spyware companies to treat cookies like spyware. REAL spyware is malicious, machine-hijacking junk that throw pop-ups on your computer, resets your start page, and all sorts of other ugly tricks. A cookie is a text file that has some non-personal information what banner ads have shown on certain sites. That's it.
Go ahead and open the cookie on your computer and you'll see it's harmless. Cookies are not spyware, no matter how hard these anti-spyware companies try to make them out to be. You have to realize that these guys are trying to sell their software too, and if they start blocking cookies as well, they give the perception that they're "protecting" you even more often. They have an agenda too - think about it. ;-)
It's also worth noting how many cookies are used - I deleted all my cookies yesterday, and in only 24 hours of Web browsing I have more than 50 on my computer. It's the way the Web works, but it's not spyware.
