[Kooler] Cookiegate

[Ralph Shumaker]

"Chris, the Young One" wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 10:27:06PM -0700, Lan Barnes wrote:
> ! Thanks for the clarification on session cookies. Perhaps those
> ! can be stopped at a firewall outgoing.
> 
> Cookie-filtering firewalls? That's new. Unless you're talking about
> HTTP proxies, but personally I find proxies to be more invasive than
> I'm comfortable with.

I use (on my w95 PC) a proxy (called webcelerator) that exists on my
own PC.  Netscape doesn't seem to hit its own cache much.  Reloads,
especially the "Back" button, really sped up a lot since using the
proxy.  I thought it was just a fancy cache.  Am I wrong?  How is it
invasive?

> ! I purposely chose this method over disabling cookies. Just as
> ! with javascript, some sites will refuse to load if one does not
> ! accept cookies.
> 
> Ah. In that case, your approach just turns all cookies into session
> cookies, persistent or not.
> 
> Terminology: a session cookie is a cookie that lasts until you exit
> your browser. A persistent cookie lasts until a given expiry date.
> A session cookie is not normally stored on disc (since it'll not be
> available when you next run the browser anyway).

1)  You say that his approach "just turns all cookies into session
cookies, persistent or not".  Does that mean that without his
approach, some are nothing more than session cookies anyway?  Or are
you saying that his approach turns normal cookies (persistent) into
something they were not intended to be (session only)?

2)  The people who make these cookies that they want me to swallow,
do they make two different types of cookies (session & persistent)?

3)  Is a session cookie merely a persistent one that just got
accessed and loaded into memory thereby making it into a session
cookie?

4)  How would session cookies help those who are trying to "gather
information about me"?  How would persistent ones?

5)  If a persistent cookie is normally stored on disc, why would it
be kept in memory also?  As some sort of cache?


-- 
Ralph

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