Flight comparison sites and cookies.

jackvaughn

If you are using a website such as SkyScanner to compare flight prices, you may find that cookies are being used to artificially inflate the prices you are being offered.

For those of you who don't know, a cookie is a small file places on your hard drive when you access certain websites.
The cookies themselves can not cause any harm to your computer, you or your pets, but they can be used to keep track of your web activity, and therefore be used unscrupulously.

MSE for example uses cookies to keep track of a few bits and pieces, just to make the site easier and quicker for you to navigate. Nothing wrong with that.

However, I recently used Sky Scanner since I find it to be quite a good flight comparison site. I visited on the Friday to check some prices, and on the following Monday, went back to check again and found the a flight from Gatwick to Murcia had risen from £85 to £125. Quite a jump. I assumed at the time this was because more seats had been sold on the flight I wanted and so the price has risen.

I phoned my girlfriend to give her the bad news, and she told me that she'd just checked, at the price she was looking at was only £100. Strange. I was a bit suspicious.

I deleted the skyscanner cookies from Google Chrome, checked the price again and what do you know, it had dropped to £100.

The website cookies were keeping track of what flights I had been enquiring about. If I check a price and then check it again a few days later, the site can expect that the person looking still hasn't found a flight, and so it becoming more desperate, and so will be willing to pay more. Clever, if a bit nasty.

So, make sure you delete your cookies. Here's how...

PC Users

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Google Chrome: Click the Spanner Icon in the top right of the browser. Then click Settings. A new frame will open up. In this new frame select "+Show advanced settings". Next, under Privacy, click the "Content Settings" button.
Here you can select how the browser deals with cookies. I tend to set mine to "Keep local data only until I quit my browser" as this allows sites to perform as they should, but can't keep track of things between sessions.
To delete the cookies you currently have, click on the "All cookies and site data..." button. Another window will open up and you can click on the "Remove all" button to get rid of the while ruddy lot!

Firefox: Click Edit in the menu bar and then pick "Preferences" from the drop down menu. A preferences window will open. Now click on the "Privacy" icon at the top. You will now see an underlined link names "remove individual cookies" so click on this. Another window will open entitles "Cookies". Just click the "Remove all cookies" button at the bottom and hey presto, they're all gone.
You can also set Firefox to delete cookies when you close it, by going to the Privacy page under Settings, and under History, select "Use custom settings for history". This will then give you more options. You'll see a line that says "Keep until" and you can click the button next to it to change "they expire" to "I close firefox".

Internet explorer 9: Click the Tools button (looks like a cog), point to Safety, and then click Delete browsing history. Select the Cookies check box, and then click Delete.

Internet explorer 8: Click the Safety button (not sure where this is as I'm not running this browser), and then click Delete Browsing History. Select the check box next to Cookies.

Instruction for Apple Macs, iPads, iPhones and other smart phones can be found by searching "Deleting cookies on WHATEVER" on Google.

I'd personally recommend using CCleaner (Just Google CCleaner and it's on the Piriform website) which is a free program that will clean up your Windows hard drive including deleting cookies that aren't needed.
If you prefer an open source option or are using Linux, try Bleachbit which can be found on the bleachbit . com website (I'm new here so can't post links yet!) which is also free but a little bit less sexy looking.

Happy surfing folks.

Jack

jpsartre

Why would Skyscanner artifically inflate the price you see? They don't sell airline tickets. If anything, it would be in their interest to deflate the price, thereby creating traffic to the relevant seller.

I never really understood the "if you keep looking you are showing you are desperate" logic. If you're desperate wouldn't you be more inclined to buy straight away and thereby less inclined to check prices often? If someone keeps checking prices it seems to me at least as plausible that the current asking price is simply too high and that the customer is refraining from buying because of this.