Cookies

I clear out my cookie cache. I visit one or two sites (no more!). I look at my cookie cache, see dozens of cookies of places I never heard of. Example: http://videoamp.com/ . They are like mouse droppings. I never heard of http://videoamp.com/. How do these cookies get there?

A.

They're known as "third party cookies". Sites other than those you visit have agreements of one kind or another that arrange to have the site you do visit drop a cookie on your browser on their behalf. Generally these cookies are for tracking purposes only. The third party wants to know what you're looking at because they believe it will assist them in marketing to you in various ways. You can often set your browser to refuse third party cookies. But generally, if you block ads or ignore them, there's no real reason to do so.

You can stop this happening by installing the Ghostery browser extension. It stops trackers and a lot of adverts.

John,

Interesting. Thank you.

Your answer inspires another question, though (and perhaps displays my ignorance): Site X drops a cookie on my computer for Site Y. But it is unlikely that I will ever visit Site Y. http://videoamp.com/ , listed in my original question, is a good example. So what's the point? Who can be expected to ever read the cookie? In other words, who is tracking me?

A.

Styxlawyer,

Thank you.

Ghostery looks interesting. Does it also block "second party cookies"? If so, various sites that I do visit will then not work.

Would anyone else here care to comment on their experiences with ghostery?

A.

I'm pretty sure most browsers allow you to determine what type of cookies, if any, you want to allow. Some sites will get snippy at you for refusing cookies though. I would recommend against any add on unless you cannot do whatever it is that it does using the browser's configuration and/or your computer in general. The reason for that is that add ons often carry overhead and/or some "features" you don't want.

As for the question you asked me -

A lot of cookie tech is an act of faith. While on site A, site B has them drop a cookie for Site B, that when you're on site C is read, and shows you an ad for site Z because site B thinks you're the sort of person who might like what site Z sells. So, you never go to site B, but if this works, they're happy because site Z pays* them, and sites A and C are happy because site B pays* them.

*pays or compensates in some manner, has a mutual arrangement of some kind.

That is incestuous! (Among other things.)

I appreciate the education.

A.

John, as best I can tell, you are semi-right. My browser, Firefox 47.0.1 allows me to set a preference for no tracking. And I did that. As it turns out, it is only a preference. Trackers can, and do, ignore it.

A.

You can just periodically delete cookies. That might be good because, that way - they think they are tracking you, so, they're happy. You should also be able to set all cookies to expire at the end of session (whenever the browser is closed).

- Just checked, did not see anything better than that lame "tracking" thing, you can deny all tracking (as opposed to just a friendly request to not be tracked, but that will make some websites behave oddly), did you see that? Other than that you still have the ability to periodically delete cookies manually. Will check more later - suggest you try Google to find other possible options available in FF.

There are also third party disk cleanup utilities you can run periodically to delete temp files and cookies. Or, you can attempt to find the cookie folder and just delete its contents every so often.

Another thing to be aware of is called Local Storage. This is very much like cookies and its behavior can also be set either in the browser or by browsing to a place via settings in any flash app to do so.

My solution is to use an ad blocker. That way it doesn't matter whether they track you or not. Even if they don't track you, you still see ads, they're just not targeted to what the cookies etc. think you might want. With an ad blocker you don't see very many, almost no ads. If an ad creeps in, you can usually target it specifically in the ad blocker's configuration. You can even use this feature to block content you don't want to see. For instance, during the playoffs I sometimes want to block scores of games I've recorded but haven't viewed yet. The downside to this approach is it is an add on and does slow things some. And on some occasions a site will protest if it detects the ad blocker, then you have to decide whether or not the content is worth it (ad blockers can be temporarily disabled in such cases, or completely disabled for configured sites). To me it's worth dealing with. I hate all ads. If I need something and have no idea where to get it, I'll Google it.

I have no interest at all in making those b******* happy.

I'll look more closely at other options that FF offers.

Thanks again.

A.

LOL. They wouldn't really be happy if they knew, but they will think you're being tracked. I'm sure there's at least one (probably several) ad blockers available for FF. I use adgaurd and am very happy with it. Their computer wide version is not free, but the browser specific ones are free. I use Opera most, so I have it for that, but they have one for FF, all of the browser specific versions are available here:

https://adguard.com/en/adguard-adblo.../overview.html

This will not stop you from being tracked, but it will block the ads sites try to show you on the basis of their tracking of you. I like this approach because it doesn't stop cookies which often are required for websites to work properly. And as I say, even if you stop cookies, you still see ads, they're just more random - not targeted at you.