At 2004-04-13 21:14, Dave Baldwin / DIBsed wrote: >On my "Computer Support" page, I have links to three programs that have >been recommended on the Web ProWorld site and others. They take care of >many things that anti-virus programs don't even know about. One is >Ad-Aware which will remove a lot of unwanted cookies and related files, >Easy Cleaner which cleans up your registry entries and some other >things, and SpyBot-Search&Destroy which is probably the most powerful >because it removes not just cookies and unwanted registry entries but >also spy-ware programs themselves. I use these on all five of my >(Windows) systems and on my customers systems. My sisters computer had >a spy-ware marketing program that virtually locked up her computer >because it would try to connect to it's owners web site every minute or >so. SpyBot found and removed it along with it's registry entries.
Cookies are much more a good thing than a bad thing for the user, although popular media like newspapers try to convince us that they are the work of the devil. HTML is a 'stateless' protocol, which means that both parties, the visitor and the visited site don't follow a serie of states. The browser of the visitor can ask for whatever page it wants in any order repeating steps as much as it wants. The visitor also don't first has to log-in and later log-out (like in FTP). This is a good thing. However whenever the site is supposed to remember a visitor or something about a visitor, like in the case of a 'shopping cart' or for example settings, that is not possible within the original HTML protocol. For this reason, cookies were invented. A cookie is a string that a site sends to a visitor, together with an HTML page and the browser of the visitor is supposed to remember this (for the session or for a given time, like say up to 5 years) and it is supposed to return this string again, whenever the visitor visits the same site again. (But please note that nothing more is send back then what was sent originally, so the site is only 'reminded' of things it already knew...) This system was deviced with the privacy of the user in mind: The information about you is stored on your computer and not in the database of the site and you are free to delete it at will. How much more privacy do you want? Lately WWW-applications are getting more and more sophisticated and a lot of those applications require that the site can identify individual users, at least during one session. Since a lot of people don't trust cookies and have disabled them, there is an alternative which consists of adding a session ID to each URL send by the site to the user, it's something like: http://www.domain.com/path/page.htm?session=1233453451234 This method however has a lot of disadvantages: - The URL gets ugly. - This method is much less safe than using cookies, because session-hijacking is much easier: For example, just sending this URL to a friend will enable him to take over your session. So remember: Cookies are our friends and when you want to bash cookies, make sure you know what you're talking about and don't just repeat what the popular press is saying about it, because they are just repeating what they heard from other unreliable colleagues and whenever someone claims that cookies can contain virusses, it's clear that he is an idiot (and you should notify the chief-editor of the newspaper and you should cancel your subscription ;-). As regards my Chipdir using cookies: It uses cookies to remember your name and email-address (when you have entered it in any form) and it will fill it in wherever a name and or email address is asked again in another form. It's not registered in any database, it's just for your convenience. I also try to use cookies to track who was shown which advertisement on which page, so I can send the visitor to the right destination should he click on the advertisement later. I didn't manage to implement this full-proof correctly yet, so currently all ad's only appear at fixed locations and the mere position tells enough about which advertiser to send the visitor to. For those who think advertising is 'bad': Well one has to live and it keeps the Chipdir free of charge for the visitors (as long as they resist clicking on any ad. ;-) By the way, I also manage the ads on a similar (but completely German) site: http://www.aufzu.de/ Greetings, Jaap -- Chip Directory -- http://www.chipdir.biz/ -- http://www.chipdir.info/ -- http://www.chipdir.net/ -- http://www.chipdir.nl/ -- http://www.chipdir.org/ -- And about 30 other mirror sites world-wide. -- -- To subscribe to a free 'chip issues, questions and answers' -- mailing list, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with -- in the body 'subscribe chipdir-L'. About 500 experts are -- willing to think with you about electronics problems etc. -- Author: Jaap van Ganswijk INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Hosting, San Diego, California -- http://www.fatcity.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB CHIPDIR-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
