Cookie Crumbles

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   Wall Street Journal, February 14, 1996, p. B6.


   Internet Users Say They'd Rather Not Share Their 'Cookies'

   By Joan E. Rigdon


   Netscape Communications Corp., responding to complaints
   from consumers, said it will change its Internet browser
   software so customers can prevent on-line merchants from
   tracking their footsteps in cyberspace.

   The ruckus began Monday, when the Financial Times reported
   on a little-known feature in Netscape software called
   Cookies. Cookies helps merchants on the Internet's
   multimedia World Wide Web track what customers do in their
   stores, and how long they spend doing it.

   Cookies stores this data on the customer's own hard drive,
   (in a text file called "Cookies.txt" in the Netscape
   directory) . The next time the customer visits the
   merchant's store, the merchant can read about the
   customer's last visit, and serve up a version of the store
   that's tailored for the customer.

   Cookies won't show merchants what other stores the customer
   has visited.

   Net surfers have complained on-line about the feature,
   saying it's an invasion of privacy and that it ties up the
   resources of their own computers.

   Netscape, the Mountain View, Calif., maker of the No. 1
   Internet browsing software, says it didn't think people
   might object to Cookies, since merchants can track a
   customer's footsteps even without Cookies, and few have
   complained about that. Product manager Jeff Treuhaft
   contends Cookies actually helps customers, because among
   other things, it allows customers to buy several things
   from different parts, or "pages," of an Internet store, and
   only pay once, instead of once at every page.

   Also, the Internet's standards board, called the Internet
   Engineering Task Force, has asked Netscape to propose
   Cookies as a standard for the Internet, Netscape said.

   Still, Netscape agreed to change the software. In future
   versions of Netscape, customers will have the choice of
   refusing to let a merchant lay down "a persistent Cookie,"
   Mr. Treuhaft says, referring to Cookies that track customer
   movements for days, weeks or months, instead of just a
   single Internet session, as most do. "We want to give the
   user as much control as possible," Mr. Treuhaft says.

   [End]


   Still, be alert for invasive snoops and tracking analytics,
   not only by NSCP, but by all those invaders crying mea 
culpa, 
   "you misjudge the goodness in our hearts, we did it for your
   own good, like all good parents. Trust us."