Harley,

I was nice enough to leave your comment, but you are way off base. Either you are selling something or you have bought into the misunderstood fearmongering of those who think cookies are evil.

You complain that cookies are taking up far too much storage space. I have a PC that has been used for five years. I have never cleared the cookie folder and I just found that I have 2951 cookies using up 46.7 MB of actual disk space. That sounds like a lot, but this is because the disk operating system wastes all the space. The files are actually 1.27 MB. But if I cleared cookies once a yar I would have 1/5th the disk space used. But who cares about 50 MB on a 20 GB disk where the OS takes up more than 2 GB and most programs start at 100 MB. You are talking about 1/4 of 1% of that 20 GB disk.

I have a newer PC that has been up for a month. It has 65 cookies on it taking up 304 KB of actual disk space. Since I now have an 80 GB disk, I don’t think I have anything to worry about. I might hit 1 GB of cookies in 100 years of so…

Your other “misconception” is where you spread the fear that sites write “ten to a hundred or even more” cookies into your system. This is wrong. There are a few rogue cookie stuffers who may do this, but they are the fringe and the ones in the wrong. 99.99% (or more) of the sites out there write one or two cookies, with 3rd party ad servers adding in their own.

If anyone is really worried, clear your cookies once a month and you will never use more than a few KB of disk space and likely never have more than a hundred or so cookies on your computer.

It is agreeable that ‘most’ Internet advertisers

could be considered ligitimate where

their ‘tracking’ cookies are concerned.

Unfortunately even ligitimate, friendly or

most well known advertising companys utilizing

tracking cookies to serve up advertisements

are sometimes unknowingly ‘abused’ by the

programmers developing the software using this

technology.

First, please do properly categorize the malicious

intrusions provided in these programs. Spyware

merely spies, viciously at times causing computer

malfuntions/slow downs. Adware is used to ’spam’

ad-after-ad at everyone possible.

The ‘adequate’ term to use over the term

mere ‘cookie’ would refer to simply those used for

ill intent. All the ‘malicious’ files/programs

should fall under one major category – Malware.

Second, I DO hope everyone understands that one

of the major ’search engines’ operating on the

Internet UTILIZES certain forms of ‘malware’.

The GOOGLE Search Engine -

Which started under the company name – DoubleClick

(source – DBusiness Magazine.)

Reading your message again, I find it quite

disturbing you do not believe this intrusive

malware to be an ‘invasion of privacy’.

For you to better understand, Thirty-million

computer owners – vs. – Twenty-Five

million ‘companys’ all pushing this ‘malware’

onto our systems.

Not to question your math skills by any means,

this would mean one mass e-mailing from each

of the twenty-five million companys to the

thirty-million computer users.

If each computer owner’s e-mail address makes

it onto each company’s list, how many e-mails

would one individual receive in their ‘in-box’?

You could ask ‘Respond.com’ since their company

made it big overnight by utilizing my similar

idea but in ‘reverse’. One individual winds up

with over a million e-mails clogging up their

‘in-box’ overnight.

Now with e-mail, your ‘precious’ cookies also

come along. Not all are bad, but quite a few

can be very hazardous to your computer’s

operation.

Finally, let me cover the ‘invasion of privacy’

situation. The Constitution of the United States

covers quite a bit about ‘FREEDOMS’ supposed to

be honored right here in the United States.

‘Freedom of Choice’ is one major message the

Constituion provides. Please, explain to me

why it is when you set your ‘browser’ to ‘ask’

before allowing cookies onto your system that

when you visit a web site, you immediately get

slammed with a ‘very forceful’ page stating;

“You MUST allow cookies to view this site”???!!!

That, my friend, is NOT freedom of choice but

one site owner FORCING others to accept possible

intrusive malware onto their computer system.

We do reserve our rights by choosing NOT to visit

any specific website but then the site owner loses

out on potential sales if users choose not to

accept cookies from the site.

At no given time should computer users be ‘forced’

to accept these cookies – good or bad. I

literally make immediate ’screen prints’ when a

specific web site slams that ‘MUST ACCEPT COOKIES’

statement in my face.

Microsoft’s very own sites has been ‘guilty’ of

forcing this issue.

What the ‘big industry’ companys need to

understand is that ‘Individual Rights’ provided

by the Constitution far outweigh the

‘company rights’.

Feel ‘advertising’ isn’t so bad? Let’s have

about ten million people arrive at your home to

‘pitch’ their products at you… throw a few

bricks through your windows, beat down your door

’till you answer, and have them ‘all at once’

begin shouting their sales pitch at you.

That is the effect advertisers have on the

Internet community. Visit a single news group

forum and place a few company ads into their

message string and watch the response you receive

for ’spamming’ their message line.

Believe it or not, the general population is more

than aware of products currently on the market,

usually by simply visiting the local stores

carrying these products.

We DO NOT need them to slam their products in our

faces in hopes of getting us to purchase them.

The computer was designed to provide faster means

to accomplish things and for the most part, it has

provided this quite efficiently. With these

‘advertisers’ utilizing ill forms of malware, they

are straining the computer’s performance

capability drastically.

Every other day I am forced to perform scans to

remove their malicious files – these ARE NOT

coming from ‘hackers’ others would have you

believe but from the advertising industry itself.

After all, most malicious software is developed

by numerous companys having programmers instill

the ‘malicious’ methods directly into their

software.

What irks me the most is the fact a computer

purchased off a shelf at the store is not even

properly set up to provide the best possible

performance to the puchasing customer.

A number of my customers purchase brand new

machines they felt were quite fast. They were

stunned at how much faster and better their system

performed AFTER I finished going through it.

On another note, the ‘advetising’ you mention?

Television has become so bombarded by advertising

that I discontinued watching it in 1996. The more

they continue to bombard the Internet with

advertising, the worse the Internet will become as

a ‘tool’ providing decent information everyone

seeks.

AOL users THINK they’re ‘experiencing’ the

Internet when millions of them are duped due to

the massive ‘eye candy’ masking offered by AOL.

Walk into a motorcycle group and call them

wussies to see what happens. Same effect with the

general public. Sooner or later, they’ll all

become fed up with the Internet and how the

advertisers are hindering their computer’s

operation and they’ll simply walk away and ignore

what the advertisers are pushing so much into.

There IS a certain PROTOCAL most using the

Internet expect. The more intellectual

individuals stick strongly to their desired

newsgroup and I feel quite sorry for anyone

mistakenly wandering into their message line

to toss even one ad into their faces.

You’ll receive thousands of ‘flame-mails’ from

these individuals if you’re lucky to get away

with just these flames.

The United States was founded on the principle

people wanted to live a quiet, peaceful life.

Big industry and the U.S. Government are doing

all they can to destroy what our forefathers

initially set out to achieve.

Unfortunately for the most part, they are

succeding.

Allow these intrusions to continue, then there

will be no such thing as The United States of

America.