One controversial mode of Internet advertising is cookies.  Cookies are basically files that are stored on your computer with information about yourself that helps Internet advertisers target your specific interests. More specifically cookies are defined by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger at Cookiecentral.com as,

“Cookies are pieces of information generated by a Web server and stored in the user's computer, ready for future access. Cookies are embedded in the HTML information flowing back and forth between the user's computer and the servers.” (CookieCentral, 2004)

             The point of cookies is to enhance the user’s Internet experience.  Before cookies, it was difficult to move information from one page to another and “experiences” that are available now would not be available to Internet users.

            One feature that cookies offer is personalized pages.  If you happen to be a sports fan and one of your sources of information is a trusted sports website that always gives you accurate scores and stories about your sports team, then it is nice to be welcomed with your name because you visit it a lot.  Also, the site is personalized with information in which you are most interested.  Being a Giants fan as well as a Nets fan will cause the page to have links for you that bring you to stories about Jeremy Shockey or Jason Kidd.  This is information that you would go to the page and read about anyway, but because the cookies have helped personalize it for you it is easier for you to get to it.

            Another feature is Internet shopping sites.  Cookies are what made online shopping possible.  When a user visits an online shopping site, they download a cookie that will contain the names of all of the items that you are looking to buy. 

“cookies are used by Internet shopping sites to keep track of you and your shopping cart. When you first visit an Internet shopping site, you are sent a cookie containing the name (ID number) of a shopping cart”. (CIAC, 1998)

            When the user gets to the checkout page where they will purchase the items that they have decided to buy, all of their items are displayed with the prices.  This makes it a lot easier on the users.  All of the items are already listed, so the user didn’t have to write down the name or product number of anything that they were interested in buying.    

             While there are many ways that cookies make your Internet experience more enjoyable, there are some people that feel cookies should not be legal. Much of this is because of the rumors about cookies that are not true.

            Some people believe that cookies are programs that scan your hard drive for private information about you.  They also believe that these programs dig through your folders and find things like your credit card numbers and passwords.  Cookies do not and could not even possibly do that.  Cookies are only files and are not any kind of program that executes a task, and because it is only a file that holds information, cookies can’t possibly do the things that people fear that they can.  There is no way for someone to get you’re personal information that is stored on your hard drive from a cookie.  Although it is possible for a program that you download to retrieve your private information, it is not possible for that to be done with a cookie.  For that to happen there would have to be some kind of executable file that could perform tasks.

            The people that believe these rumors obviously do not feel that cookies are ethical.  At the same time there are still some people that know all of the facts that don’t believe cookies are ethical.  These are the people that feel that they are an invasion of privacy.  Some people feel that the servers should not be able to have any kind of personal information about you.  Cookies do contain information about you which can include your name, the operating system you are using, the browser you are using and a list of pages that you have visited on that particular website.  Obviously the idea of this sort of information being taken from you without you being aware of it can make people a little uneasy.

            We do not agree with this belief, because if you don’t like cookies then you can always just get a way from them.  Browsers make it so that you do not have to allow your computer to download cookies.  Browsers allow you to set how you download cookies.

“Most Internet browsers have a feature that allows the user to "turn off" cookies. In Netscape Navigator, the user should go to "Preferences," and then open the "Advanced" settings. In the "Advanced" window, the user has a number of choices. The user can elect to "Accept all cookies," "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server," completely "Disable cookies," or "Warn me before accepting a cookie." In the last case, the user will get a message asking if he or she wants to accept a cookie whenever one is encountered”.  (Cunningham 2002)

 

            Cookies are not an invasion of privacy and they are ethical. Because cookies do not do anything to your computer, and are just a piece of data, we feel that they should continue to be allowed for use, just the way that they are legally allowed to be used today.

Introduction | Pop-Up Ads