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Cookie deletion

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by sam.parker

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It feels like my users are losing their cookies at a much higher rate than I would naturally expect. I have heard stories that anti-spyware apps and even the google toolbar erases a users anonymous cookies and registration cookies from all their websites. Is that true? Does anyone know what the major causes are for user cookies to be deleted? Are web visitors really actively deleting cookies in large numbers?

6 replies

by bfilmfan

Yes, most anti-spyware will kill anonymous cookies as a security risk. Most user cookies are deleted due to expiring. What is your retention period?

by craig herberg

Many desktop security products automatically reject or delete cookies that are considered security or privacy threats. Most cookies do not fall into this category. Also, it is quite easy to delete cookies within most web browsers. A lot of people do this, but I have no statistics in this regard.

Crfaig Herberg

by deepsand

Recent studies have shown that even "techies" are scrubbing, through a wide variety of methods, their machines of ALL cookies, and with increasing frequency.

While I can understand the paranoid response of the great unwashed, I find it disturbing that so many "techies," some of which have here posted to other discussions their personal revulsion for cookies, fail to understand that the net is stateless & that cookies were deliberately designed for the purpose of providing persistence when and where needed.

by htmlman

Since it is hard for the common user to decide which cookies are good and which one are not, deleating cookie will be used since one bad cookie makes the others seem bad too.
Since the education on cookies was never brought to light it is too late to salvage their acceptance.
Since it is said that flash will be the next tracking tool I beleave there will be a lot of products place out there for a price to disable this feature.
I guess the only other thing would be to place a box on the site pages where you click if you have been there before and then on the server side count the return surfers. Then send the colected information automatically at a time of day or have it manually sent by a Tec.

by deepsand

Yes, there are any number of ways to implement persistence.

Unfortunately, of those presently available, none are as simple and efficient as are cookies.

It's a shame that the purveyors of malware ruined it for those of us who use them for legitimate & necessary purposes.

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