I like white chocolate and macademia nut
Consider this a public service announcement. There is a thing trolling the world wide web of communication, and it calls itself a "cookie." This is a lie. A cookie is delicious. A cookie makes me fat. A cookie reminds me of all that is right and patriotic and perfect in this old U.S. of A. These things are not cookies. They are parasites. And they embed themselves in your computer and spy on you and make your computer sad and report back your surfing to the CIA or Russia or the Cookie Monster.
I'm serious here.
The other day I noticed my computer was a little slow, especially when surfing. Thought I'd do some routine maintenance. When I pulled up my preferences and began to empty my doodads, I accidentally hit the view all button for cookies. And there the secret was revealed. Literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of little programs had embedded themselves in my computer, AND THEY DID NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION! More tracking software than the government uses. All sorts of weird website names. Stuff that had XX in the name (what the heck is that?). Cookies that apparently came from my junk email box (tracking my Viagra usage?) It was freaky, and it took a literal minute of the spinning wheel to clear them all out.
So I thought I'd be smart, and tell my computer to ask me before it allows any cookies (some are necessary, like the ones that let me check my email online) to be my computer's friend. This has now become the BANE OF MY EXISTENCE! Any site I go to, I have to click deny no less than 3 times (and sometimes over ten) before it leaves me alone and lets me surf in peace. ANY SITE! My own blog wants to track me! This has been quite a sobering experiment. I had my credit card info stolen about a year ago, and thankfully the bank helped me clear it up quickly. But this amount of trash floating around has got to mean something.
Maybe I'm paranoid (I really don't want anybody to know I'm on Facebook?), but it's just weird to have all these little programs reporting back to someone what I'm doing. Anyone else agree? Then I give you this challenge. Turn on the "Ask my permission" setting for a day and see how often these "cookies" appear.
I'll stick to the kind that make me fat, thank you very much...
PS-I'm not a web programmer. If these things are totally harmless and I'm overreacting let me know.
I'm serious here.
The other day I noticed my computer was a little slow, especially when surfing. Thought I'd do some routine maintenance. When I pulled up my preferences and began to empty my doodads, I accidentally hit the view all button for cookies. And there the secret was revealed. Literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of little programs had embedded themselves in my computer, AND THEY DID NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION! More tracking software than the government uses. All sorts of weird website names. Stuff that had XX in the name (what the heck is that?). Cookies that apparently came from my junk email box (tracking my Viagra usage?) It was freaky, and it took a literal minute of the spinning wheel to clear them all out.
So I thought I'd be smart, and tell my computer to ask me before it allows any cookies (some are necessary, like the ones that let me check my email online) to be my computer's friend. This has now become the BANE OF MY EXISTENCE! Any site I go to, I have to click deny no less than 3 times (and sometimes over ten) before it leaves me alone and lets me surf in peace. ANY SITE! My own blog wants to track me! This has been quite a sobering experiment. I had my credit card info stolen about a year ago, and thankfully the bank helped me clear it up quickly. But this amount of trash floating around has got to mean something.
Maybe I'm paranoid (I really don't want anybody to know I'm on Facebook?), but it's just weird to have all these little programs reporting back to someone what I'm doing. Anyone else agree? Then I give you this challenge. Turn on the "Ask my permission" setting for a day and see how often these "cookies" appear.
I'll stick to the kind that make me fat, thank you very much...
PS-I'm not a web programmer. If these things are totally harmless and I'm overreacting let me know.
Labels: Cookies