Chris Marriott wrote:

"Greg Crinklaw" wrote in message
...

Aren't you familiar with the dreaded cookie monster?


Of course. That had escaped me :-).

Seriously, though, if I go somewhere like "Amazon" I _want_ it to know who I
am and what sort of things I've bought in the past so that it can recommend
to me things which might reasonably be expected to interest me. Where's the
harm in that?

There isn't any. I suppose there is the *potential* of harm in terms of
invasion of privacy either by governments or private parties if this
sort of thing were taken too far. But the solution to that problem is
to be politically vigilant so it can't happen.

Unfortunately there are a lot of paranoid people out there who don't
understand how cookies work (I recall reading alarmist articles about
them in local computer magazines over a decade ago). If people don't
understand what the limitations of cookies are it is easy for them to be
misled by the paranoid among us. If you stop and think about it every
age has it's demons. The only thing new about this is the specific
technology that's being demonized. As always, knowledge is the only
solution.

Clear skies,
Greg