About your cookies

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I appreciate your reply, but my question had to do with the point of the cookies. Since nothing changes when I block them as opposed to when I don't, what's the point of them?

Just about anything can be used to piggyback parasites and viruses, and I don't want anything implanted on my hard drive unless I know what it is.

The subject doesn't bother Baron, which is his prerogative. But they are an annoyance.
 
Quote from dbphoenix:

I appreciate your reply, but my question had to do with the point of the cookies. Since nothing changes when I block them as opposed to when I don't, what's the point of them?

Just about anything can be used to piggyback parasites and viruses, and I don't want anything implanted on my hard drive unless I know what it is.

The subject doesn't bother Baron, which is his prerogative. But they are an annoyance.
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Well that's a good question. Everything that can be achieved with cookies can also be achieved with PHP-sessions and a server-side database. Perhaps the one thing you could have with cookies that you can't do with sessions is have long-term variables registered.

I know with many sites, if you have cookies enabled, you can choose to have your log-on information stored locally so you don't have to sign in each time.

There is a lot of misconceptions out there over what can and cannot carry viruses. Cookies are created by your computer and stored on your computer. The server side tells the client side, "Hey, please put this information under this variable." Your computer than creates a cookie for a site such as elitetrader.com that holds the information.

Here is a great introduction to cookies:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cookie.htm
 
Quote from aphexcoil:

There is a lot of misconceptions out there over what can and cannot carry viruses.
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Technically, correct. However, it is not possible to select which cookies you're going to block and which you aren't unless you do it every time. Yes, it's simple and probably benign to accept the "sessionhash" cookies. But one must also accept all the "ad" cookies. If one doesn't want to accept all the trackerbots from ads, then one must review every cookie, and since the "sessionhash" cookie has no apparent function, blocking it is an unnecessary pain in the ass.

There is a lot of piggy-backing going on of which people are completely unaware until they have to deal with, in my case, hijacking. Since I can no longer use email, this is not trivial.
 
Quote from dbphoenix:

Technically, correct. However, it is not possible to select which cookies you're going to block and which you aren't unless you do it every time. Yes, it's simple and probably benign to accept the "sessionhash" cookies. But one must also accept all the "ad" cookies. If one doesn't want to accept all the trackerbots from ads, then one must review every cookie, and since the "sessionhash" cookie has no apparent function, blocking it is an unnecessary pain in the ass.

There is a lot of piggy-backing going on of which people are completely unaware until they have to deal with, in my case, hijacking. Since I can no longer use email, this is not trivial.
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Only a site that created the cookie can modify it. So if you know a respectable site, once you choose to accept cookies from that site, you don't have to continue to choose to accept them at a future date.

How a computer could get hijacked from the use of cookies is beyond me. I've never heard of such a thing.
 
I'm using the term "cookie" generically.

As to respectability, if you don't know that a great deal of hijacking goes on via "tracking" implants, then you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
 
Quote from dbphoenix:


The subject doesn't bother Baron, which is his prerogative. But they are an annoyance.
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Any effort you put into blocking cookies on this site is totally up to you, but in my opinion, it's a waste of time. All I can say is that there's no conspiracy here to hijack your computer through cookies. The assertion of such is ridiculous to begin with since as aphie correctly pointed out, cookies are simply variables, and not "code".

We use cookies for the benefit of our servers just as much as for your benefit. So although there may be cookies which seemingly don't do anything on your end, they help our servers do things like identifying the most popular areas of the site. Cookies also enable us to improve your experience on the site. An example of this would be the post indicators that show which posts and private messages have been submitted since your last visit. They also help us distinguish between the different types of users such as members, moderators, and administrators. The ad cookies help our servers to know which particular ad has been clicked on, which is very important when there are more than one advertisement on a page.

All I can say is that if you decide to block cookies and then later discover that the site is not working properly for you, don't look at me because there's nothing I can do about that. I usually get one or two emails per week from people who install ad-blocking software such as the one by Norton, and then discover that the site doesn't display threads properly, or at all.
 
I wouldn't call it "ridiculous" since my computer has already been hijacked.

I asked a question. If you see no problem, then that's all there is to it.
 
Thanks to my wife I got my cookies last night after the kids went to bed!!!!!!!


I've could of resisted but I choose not to.

:D :D :D
 
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