But the problem is that you assume they -only- use cookies..
It's not good to assume that..
Let's put it this way.. You visit a site to buy something.. The site grabs your cookie and then reports back to a server that you just visited their site. Then you decide to buy a product so you find the stuff you want and add them to your cart.. Each time you add an item your cart the website tells the server exactly what items you are adding to your cart. THEN you fill out your address and cc info.. That gets sent to the server also (along with your cookie id!!).. now that site has all of your info.. so where does this cookie id come in? well it's a global cookie which means you are tracked across multiple sites, which all run this "tracking" software...
That means I can go to my "user tracking" database and do a lookup on "Lone\/\/olf" and I can see that you visit this sex site and got a porno, then you went to walmart.com and got some hand cuffs, then you went to some other place and got a new bike.... and then I can go and sell all of your contact information to another company who wants to send you ads for porno since they KNOW you like to buy porno............. Not just email ads, but phone, and snail mail ad's also. this can be done with out using cookies, but cookies is what ties it all together.. it's what the site uses to know who you are on each page you visit, and it is used to track you on other websites.. etc.. and you never know all of this is happening either.. not unless you always read the privacy pages on every website you shop at...
and yes.. w3t's use of cookies IS very valid.. I'm just saying that people who disable cookies probably have a pretty good reason, and I wouldn't say they are 100% wrong, and I think it would be good to take these people into account because they -are- out there and they do deserve to use this forum if they want, with out having to enable cookies.. Tracking users who have cookies disabled by using a session is a good enough solution.. it will let them use the forum, but they will have to login every day, or every time they close the browser.. that beats not being able to use the forum at all.
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Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
