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Cookie Types and Ethics of Their Use

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Submitted By mattfones
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Cookie Types and Ethics of Their Use
Matthew Fones
IFSM 201
06/30/2013

The purpose of this research paper is to identify and explain three commonly seen cookies used on the Internet, along with identifying any potential ethical issues with such activities. The two most commonly used cookies are session cookies, persistent cookies. I will also describe a third type of cookie known as a flash cookie. First I will define what a computer cookie is. A cookie is a piece of text that a Web server can store on a user's hard disk or equivalent. Cookies allow a Web site to store information on a user's machine and later retrieve it (Brain, 2000). Cookies are created when a user's browser loads a particular website. The website sends information to the browser which then creates a text file. Every time the user goes back to the same website, the browser retrieves and sends this file to the website's server. Without cookies, websites and their servers have no memory. Computer Cookies are created not just by the website the user is browsing, but also by other websites that run ads, widgets, or other elements on the page being loaded. These cookies regulate how the ads appear or how the widgets and other elements function on the page. The first type of cookie to be described is the session cookie. This type of cookie allows users to be recognized within a website so any page changes or data selection you do is remembered from page to page. The most common example of this functionality is the shopping cart feature of any e-commerce site. When you visit a page of a catalog and select certain items, the session cookie remembers your selection so your shopping cart will have the items you selected when you are ready to check out. Without session cookies, if you click “checkout”, the new page would not recognize you’re past activities on the prior pages and your shopping cart will always be empty. A cookie, like a key, enables swift passage from one place to the next. Without a cookie every time you open a new web page, the server where that page is stored, will treat you like a completely new visitor. Websites typically use session cookies to ensure that you are recognized when you move from page to page within one site and that any information you have entered is remembered. For example, if an e-commerce site did not use session cookies then items placed in a shopping basket would disappear by the time you reach the checkout. (All About Cookies) A few examples of when session cookies expire are; the user logs out of a site or a portion of a site, the user shuts down the browser, the session is inactive for a specified length of time, often 20 minutes, the user starts a new Internet session on the same computer. Session cookies seem to be more focused on the user’s ease of use of a website, in comparison of being overly invading or intrusive. Persistent cookies are files that stay in one of your browser's subfolders until you delete them manually or your browser deletes them based on the duration period contained within the persistent cookie's file. These cookies enable a website to remember you on subsequent visits, speeding up or enhancing the experience of your services or functions offered. For example, a website may offer its contents in different languages. On your first visit, you may choose to have the content delivered in French and the site may record that preference in a persistent cookie set on your browser. When you revisit that site it will use the cookie to ensure that the content is delivered in French. (All About Cookies) The benefit is that a persistent cookie will remember the way you would like to view or access a particular website. The unfortunate risk of having a persistent cookie is that they are generally stored as a text file on the hard drive and an attacker with access to the victim's machine can steal this information. The third type of cookie I will refer to is a flash cookie. I chose this type of cookie to illustrate that not all cookies that are stored on your computer share the same characteristics and purpose as the aforementioned. There are other types of cookies that don’t fit in the persistent/non persistent category that have malicious possibility, and the flash cookie is an easy and clear cut example of how cookies can and have evolved. It is not well known to the average Internet surfer but Adobe has produced it’s own brand of web cookies that you cannot read and the majority of top websites are already using them on their visitors. Normal Internet Cookies are limited in their size to 4kb…. Adobe flash cookies however (i.e. also called Local Shared Objects, LSO), have a maximum size of 100kb. The user must navigate to the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager In order to check the flash cookies residing on their machine. There are no other methods of doing this. The larger size they have do allow flash cookies on a website to save at least parts of favorite songs, videos, and photo media in order to make for a richer user experience. (Waterfield, 2013). Having to now go to individual websites to clear your own machine of tracking files constitutes a new generation of cookie. Flash cookies are popular, valuable to advertisers, very well hidden, and are here to stay. Upon explaining a few different types of cookies that we encounter frequently, I found that the premise and perhaps the origins of “the cookie” were meant to give the Internet user an overall more convenient and pleasant experience while web browsing. The 4kb file stored either temporarily or not, doesn’t seem to be to invasive or intrusive. The ethical issue is that it seems that when you give a little for the benefit of convenience a lot is taken for commercial or malicious use. From the evolution of the cookie, to now be substantially larger and have more of a data-tracking/tracing role seems very suspect. The most unethical part of the larger more invasive tracking cookie is that they are now being essentially locked away by the designer in a not so well known location. The whole process of designing a file/program to track and trace the activity of an Internet user without their consent needs further attention. This seems to be a violation of privacy since the Internet is an open market, why should it be legal to have your activity traced without your consent. There are many reasons a given site would wish to use cookies. These range from the ability to personalize information, or to help with on-line sales/services, or simply for the purposes of collecting demographic information. Those reasons are not invasive and seem ethical, the problem we have to keep in check now, and in the years to come, are the tracing and tracking files that are being installed onto our computers without giving us the ability to conveniently erase or identify.

References

1. All About Cookies. (n.d.). What are cookies in computers. Retrieved June 28, 2013, from All About Cookies: www.allaboutcookies.org

2. Brain, M. (2000, april 26). How Stuff Works. Retrieved june 25, 2013, from How Internet Cookies Work: computer.howstuffworks.com/cookie6.htm

3. Waterfield, D. (2013, March 25). Adobe Flash Cookies. Retrieved June 25, 2013, from Suite101: suite101.com/article/adobe-flash-cookies-a138836

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. http://www.adobe.com
[ 2 ]. In any event, remember that most cookie files are 4KB or smaller, so you would need about a million cookies to fill up a 4GB drive.
[ 3 ]. http://suite101.com/article/adobe-flash-cookies-a138836

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