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Cookies as spyware
If you’re a regular reader of this column, and you pay attention to such things then you know that we have set a cookie or two. Those cookies are used to make sure that the skin you have selected to view the site is the same that you’ll see the next time you drop by, to discourage people from voting often in the poll questions that I post from time to time, and to help keep track of which articles are new to you.
Aunty Spam tell us that a couple of people have been accusing Pocket PC Thoughts of distributing spyware. The problem with this is that they aren’t. They have a 3rd party advertising aggregator that sets a cookie in order to ensure some variation in the ads that they serve which you see.
Can cookies be a bad thing? Sure. They’re little bits of information about you and your habits that are stored on your computer that can be referenced. And like any other information out there, there are possible ways to exploit that for purposes that are less than honorable. But that doesn’t mean that they are evil by default.
See, the thing is, you have to possess some ability to discern the intent of the person or company setting the cookie. You can turn cookies off for this site, but your enjoyment of it would almost certainly drop in response since you would be looking at it pretty much the same as an RSS reader does. You can turn off 3rd party cookies (which is what I do) and suffer though seeing the same ad served by Doubleclick 50 consecutive times. That’s your choice.
But because something can be used in an “evil” manner doesn’t mean that it is. It also doesn’t make it spyware. It’s not actually spying on you. It’s not reporting back to some central server some amount of information to which you are not and cannot be privvy.
So, before you do something stupid, like saying that all cookies are spyware, take a deep breath, count to ten, and see if it really fits the definition of the word.
MickC @ November 9, 2004