WSJ Warnings About Cookies Carry Cookies 45
itwbennett writes "The Wall Street Journal has 'a pretty useful section tracking privacy issues, privacy protection tools and the threats thereof from online marketers, from the point of view and on the technical level of a relatively savvy consumer,' says blogger Kevin Fogarty. The downside: He discovered that reading two stories from the WSJ's privacy section left behind deletion-resistant Flash cookies."
Trojan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that count as a Trojan article?
Rgds
Damon
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Does that count as a Trojan article?
Ironic, for our pleasure.
Those cookie crumbs sure do itch though.
Re: (Score:2)
Come on, anyone knows an article like this is half-baked; it's all about the dough, and only chips away at the real issues. I want to see the subject served up on a platter, freshly prepared and ready for immediate consumption, before I'll endorse a crumby thing like this.
Re: (Score:2)
I know. That picture makes me want to go to the grocery store and buy some of the pre-made pilsbury or tollhouse cookies...
Damn you slashdot! I'm trying to NOT look like the steriotypical obese geek, thank you very much! mm.... coookies...
Cookies carrying cookies?! (Score:2, Funny)
Yo dawg, we heard you like cookies...
Re: (Score:2)
yo dawg, i herd you like sarcasm so i appended a yo dawg comment to a yo dawg thread so you can be sarcastic while you're sarcastic.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you still wish to opt out?
Re: (Score:2)
It is possible to opt out of this in your settings. However, that information will be stored in a cookie.
How else would the site remember that you’d asked to opt-out of its tracking cookies upon your next visit?
The important question is... is the flash cookie user-unique?
Cookies in the Cookie article? (Score:4, Funny)
It's a good thing it wasn't an article on syphylis
Maybe your are not as .sol as you think! (Score:1)
Bullocks I can see it is really easy to get rid of flash cookies. .sol files with a Windows SWF install then try in Linux. The cookies are set in a .macromedia folder created in the specific user /home directory and do not require root to remove. I guess if you run Windows then you might be .sol but my guess is that if you set up users in windows correctly then there should be no trouble "chucking your cookies"...Something I frequently do when using Windows. It is not that hard if yo
If you cannot access the
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Bullocks I can see it is really easy to get rid of flash cookies. If you cannot access the .sol files with a Windows SWF install then try in Linux.....
Yes that's going to be really easy for the majority of Windows users!
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Let's all just acknowledge this for a moment (Score:5, Insightful)
"Threats of online marketers."
Online marketing is a threat. We all need to acknowledge this and accept it. It is a threat to our privacy and to ourselves if and when that information is sold (because there are few if any laws against it) for purposes other than marketing. The problem starts with aggressive marketing. It needs to stop. They will not willingly respect us. They have to be forced to do so. They will not change their ways out of guilt or shame -- they have none. Let it settle into your brain and then act accordingly.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Users are stupid, and they aren't willing to understand tracking behavior-- and they SHOULDN'T HAVE TO.
There is such a thing as public safety, and the behavior of marketers is something that needs sorely to be roped in. You can educate people until you're blue in the face. But the whofuckingcaresaboutyourprivacy folks will be one to five steps ahead if it's legal.
Doing a holier-than-thou solves nothing. Instead, do what you can to strangle the proctological orrifi that think that your information is about *
Re: (Score:2)
It's a threat to your privacy to use the unencrypted un-anonymous web.
Even use of TOR doesn't guarantee your "privacy".
Let's all sit around in a group and read news paper articles.
If you want to read a section, just ask someone sitting next to you to pass it along.
Now, let's try to provide the news paper, room and chairs for free... Guess what happens: Advertising.
Guess what makes more money? Targeted Advertising. Guess who knows that you want the sports section? That fella sitting next to you who passes
police thyself (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently they can't even recognize their own behavior, let alone police themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW they did include their own site in the study's infographic, at least.
dammit (Score:2)
Flash cookies (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Flash cookies are easily deleted using Adobe's Settings Manager. [macromedia.com]
Yes, having to go to an Adobe web page to delete files from your local machine makes perfect sense.
Personally I just configured Apparmor so Flash can't write to anything but /tmp and its local config files, and no longer have to worry about whatever stupid crap Adobe do.
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Except that isn't enough (Score:2)
Firefox's BetterPrivacy extension (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
In addition to Better Privacy, you can also change your flash plug-in settings to disallow LSO's using the flash applet at Macromedia [macromedia.com].
Looks like another memo from... (Score:2)
the Department of Redundancy Department.
Flash a-ah (Score:1)
Savior of the Universe
Flash
He save everyone of us
Flash
He's a miracle
Flash
King of the impossible
Words have power (Score:1)
If they had been named turds, rather than cookies, people might use and accept them a little less casually. From now on that's how I'm referring to them.
Why's this in "Idle"? (Score:2)
I'm just trying to figure out why this would fall into the Idle category? I thought Idle was supposed to be for *completely* useless, completely *offtopic* stuff which wouldn't fit anywhere else on slashdot?
Information about WSJ articles on privacy and cookies seems pretty on-topic compared to most of the stuff in Idle.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just trying to figure out why this would fall into the Idle category?
I would guess because it's completely useless. It's the equivalent of someone high on weed (or Alanis Morrisette) making an "insightful" comment about irony. Next Week: online journal publishes article about the potential dangers of the internet on the internet!!!!!!!
Cookies!!!!! (Score:1)
No flash storage = no streaming porn (Score:1)
Are you going to disable it now?