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jdh
April 21st, 2007, 01:12 AM
04/20/07 Ad networks tracking users without cookies

http://www.cgisecurity.com/2007/04/10

Article does not seem to say how widespread this is.

Can defeat it by disabling JavaScript.

Personally, I have JavaScript disabled by default (FF NoScript add on) and cookies enabled by default since enabling cookies (whitelisting sites) is too much of a bother for me. Probably I should change my FF settings to erase all cookies when FF closes, but I haven't bothered with it yet.

DH

Judy G. Russell
April 21st, 2007, 07:51 AM
04/20/07 Ad networks tracking users without cookiesThese days, my car can track me without my doing anything. My cellphone can track me and tell me when I'm passing a Whozeewhatzit store that's having a sale.

sidney
April 21st, 2007, 09:40 PM
There is a comment on the original article that this links to which points out that the no-cookie tracker does no more than a session ID, i.e., it cannot track the browser when you exit it and start it up again. That makes it even less capable than an ordinary persistent cookie, and no different than session cookies or session IDs in a URL. It may be a clever trick, bit not one that anybody needs to bother using, nor anything that one need to protect against.