Question about cookies

System

The worries about personal data like this fascinate me, it's the biggest display of arrogance I can imagine.

Millions of peoples worth of personal data and you think you're so important someone is going to say "Ooh, lets have a look at what this bloke bought on amazon today.

Data is used for trends and machine learning, no one gives a flip about individuals.

As far as I'm concerned I don't have any private data, it's all out there, copied thousands of times.

Edit: My favourite example was when Pok!mon Go came out. Someone I knew said "Urgh I'm not playing that they will track where you go".

Yes Dave, as if anyone gives a s**t which supermarket you went to yesterday.

Sapphire

MobileSaver wrote: »

Disagree entirely, no-one is forcing you to visit a particular website, it is entirely your choice. If you don't want to abide by the site's rules then you can't go any further, again your choice.

Cookies are pretty much indispensable for most web sites to work properly so it's like turning up for a race track event day, getting in the car and then complaining you have no choice as they'll only let you go any further if you agree to wear a helmet and seatbelt.

That's fine, then. I'll make my choice by avoiding the wonders of the Internet whenever I can.

I wouldn't disagree with the use of cookies if I was convinced that they were only used for 'most websites to work properly'. However, I still do not know why (and by whom) cookies from organisations that I have nothing to do with and never visit are being dumped (and re-dumped) on my machine. It should be my choice to exclude them.

System

antrobus wrote: »

Mmmm, someone who doesn't understand how the internet economy works:).

That's not really my point (personal data and privacy), if you want a cheap price just open an incognito tab rather than cocking about.

antrobus

Of course the real point is this.

Back in the mists of time, it was said that the foundation of the internet economy was naked teenage girls. These days the foundation of the internet economy is affiliate marketing, and affiliate marketing needs cookies to work.

You click on an advert on the Grauniad website, the cookie records the source and the Grauniad gets some money. You click on a link on some blog or whatever that recommends you buy product X and the blogger gets x% of any sale.

Without cookies none of this would work,and big chunks of the interweb would simply die. Possibly including MSE.:)

LHW99

Disagree entirely, no-one is forcing you to visit a particular website, it is entirely your choice. If you don't want to abide by the site's rules then you can't go any further, again your choice.

Sometimes there are websites I visit which say - if you don't want (cookies / javascript) you can use this (alternative version) site but it won't work so well. Fine.
However, as I said, on the whole I don't particularly worry about cookies, but many of these are ones for targeted ads. I personally find these annoying, as having bought something you seem to be bombarded with ads for a whole lot of similar items - if I needed to bulk buy computer cables (for example) I would order them in bulk, not singly and wait to be told some other shop also sells them.

Sapphire

antrobus wrote: »

Of course the real point is this.

Back in the mists of time, it was said that the foundation of the internet economy was naked teenage girls. These days the foundation of the internet economy is affiliate marketing, and affiliate marketing needs cookies to work.

You click on an advert on the Grauniad website, the cookie records the source and the Grauniad gets some money. You click on a link on some blog or whatever that recommends you buy product X and the blogger gets x% of any sale.

Without cookies none of this would work,and big chunks of the interweb would simply die. Possibly including MSE.:)

For myself, I've never clicked on any ad and never would. In fact I use an adblocker, so ads don't get through. What I do sometimes get is things like a repeating email from eBay 'recommending' a specific book (I've had exactly the same one about ten times over the last week). Since I've never even bought a book on eBay, and haven't expressed an interest in this particular title anywhere on the Internet (though I do happen to have a signed first edition of it, as it happens, bought a long time ago in a bookshop), I wonder where they would be getting the idea that I would be interested in it?

And I still don't know how (or why) facebook and twitter manage to plant cookies on my computer when I never use either site.

To me, this is all far more invasive and alarming than simple junk mail that drops through your letterbox. I can just dump that straight into the recycling bin, and almost stop it. I also don't have to worry about my personal information being misused or given out to a slew of unwanted 'interested parties', for whatever reason.