"C is for cookie, that's good enough for me."
Those words, first expressed by Sesame Street's Cookie Monster, pretty much summed up my feelings about on-line cookies, as well. They're there. My little black WebTV box feverishly gobbles them. And that's about all there was to things.
It wasn't until I discovered Net4TV Voice that I started to consider their nutritional value -- or, for that matter, their potential to cause on-line bloating and indigestion.
Impressed by the preview issue, I had contacted the staff of Net4TV Voice, offering what editorial abilities I have. But when I was subsequently assigned the topic of "cookies," I wasn't sure whether it was a subject that I could, well, sink my teeth into. After taking my first nibble, I knew I was wrong.
Like many WebTVers, I was somewhat familiar with "cookies" -- through experience, if not by name. When you visit an on-line store that uses a "shopping cart," such as the Amazon.com book store, that's done with a cookie. Or if you go to a site that asks for some information upon your first visit, then greets you by name on subsequent visits, that's also done with a cookie. Personally, I like to read about movies; so I get a cookie with my membership at the Miramax Cafe... to go with that cup of cyber espresso, I suppose.
But there's a lot more to cookies than that, I have found. Whip up an article like this, and you'll quickly learn that privacy, security, advertising and more are all part of the cookie "mix." And there are even some ingredients, so to speak, that are specific to WebTV users.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are also known as "Persistent Cookies" and "Magic Cookies" In fact, it is said that the name is based on the term "Magic Cookie" that's been used in computer jargon since the late-1970s. But "cookies" is also a more generic word that basically means "something extra." You know the "bloopers" that run alongside the credits at the end of a film? Those are called "credit cookies" -- and they're designed to keep you in your seat while the words scroll up the screen.
Similarly, online cookies add something to your surfing experience. Many analogies that you'll find on the Web describe them as "passports." And that makes about the most sense to me.
When you visit a Web site, the server can stamp your passport and send it back to you. As you visit additional sites, you may pick up additional stamps -- additional cookies. Each cookie can be a miniature record of your visit to a particular land on the World Wide Web, with information such as an ID number, the time and date of your last visit to that site, and any other information that you willingly give up -- like a password or your e-mail address. Not all sites use cookies; in fact, most are like Canada, where you can travel over the border pretty freely. Eh.
In just slightly more technical terms, a cookie is an HTTP header that consists of a "string" of text that gets entered into the memory of your browser -- in our case, the WebTV box. This string contains the domain, path, lifetime and value of a variable that you set.
These strings are then stored for future reference by the site that handed them out. Computer users have their cookies stored on their own hard disk drive. WebTV's cookies, on the other hand, are stored on the WebTV network.
Why Should a Site Use Cookies?
There are lot of reasons a site would use a cookie. Cookies provide the ability to personalize information, or to help with on-line sales -- like Amazon.com. Or a site might simply use a cookie for the purposes of tracking popular links or demographics. Cookies also give website creators a quick and easy way to track the users' interests, and then keep their site's content fresh.
Should I Fear the Cookie Monster?
Not everybody has a taste for cookies. In fact, many folks voice some very important concerns. Some concerns are technology driven; others have to do with privacy. As is most often the case with the Internet, they are pretty much part of the same batch.
It should be noted that a cookie alone cannot read your storage to find out who you are, how much money you make, where you live, whether you prefer butterscotch or chocolate chips or any other personal information. The only way that information could end up in a cookie is if you provide it to a site and that site saves it to a cookie.
Cookies can only contain as much information about you as you disclose on the site which sets the cookie. But when you fill out a form or take a similar action, that information could very well end up in a cookie. So it might not be such a half-baked idea to think twice before disclosing information that you consider personal.
Advocates of cookies point out that cookies can streamline your use of Web sites -- and that's true. For example, when visiting Miramax, I only had to enter my password once. After that, a cookie started telling the Web server who I was each time I visited, and let me bypass the usual password-protected sign-on screen. These days, the movie studio even says "hi" to me by putting my name up in lights.
But on the other hand, I now know that Miramax could easily track how often I visit, be aware about how long I spend there and get a pretty good idea about what movies I like. I don't know if they do, but I know it's possible. And the same holds true for, say, on-line newspapers such as the New York Times that also use cookies. They could know what sections of the paper you read most, for example. So browsing the Times on your WebTV is not really the same thing as reading the Sunday morning print edition from the privacy of your coffee table.
This difference is cause for some alarm among Web users. Many have foreseen that cookies could be used to develop a profile of individuals which could then be used for marketing -- or perhaps more wicked purposes. Which brings us to this next item in our list of cookie ingredients...
Cookie Advertising
As components of applications that are perhaps not as sweet as their name, cookies are already being used for what could be considered nefarious purposes. That is, if targeted advertising doesn't suit your pallet. Here's one potentially interesting morsel of information that I've learned:
There are companies that sell marketing strategies based on cookies. These companies include Globaltrack, Doubleclick, and Focalink, with Doubleclick probably being the most widely-known.
How do advertising cookies work? A site puts a paid ad banner in its pages -- but the graphic file used for the banner isn't from that site. Instead, it's a link to a graphic in the ad agency's site. So along with the advertising graphic, the visitor gets a cookie from the ad agency. Even though the ad agency might place banners in several different sites, technically your browser sees them as coming from the same site -- the ad agency.
Doubleclick has received attention by placing banner ads in Lycos and AltaVista, two popular Web search engines. So if you've visited those (or another site in the Doubleclick Network) and you "check your cookies" you're likely to see the "http://www.doubleclick.net" address -- even though you've probably never visited the Doubleclick site. To see if this theory cuts it, try the following:
To see who's been feeding you cookies, click the link below. (Note: this does not work for all boxes.)
LINK ONE LINK TWO LINK THREEPlease note that what you'll see is displayed on your screen only. Nobody else can view your cookies.
If you saw "http://www.doubleclick.net/" on your list, you can be pretty sure that this online advertising agency has at least a taste of information about you.
How's the Cookie Recipe Different on WebTV?
Chipping away at this story, I also learned that WebTV treats cookies a little differently than browsers such as Netsacpe or Microsoft Internet Explorer, which are used by folks who surf with a computer.
Like these browsers, WebTV supports cookies. Quite a few of the sites I've already mentioned wouldn't operate properly if it didn't. But, because the WebTV Classic unit doesn't have a hard disc drive, and the WebTV Plus has one, but at this time it is used only to store television-related information, your cookies are stored on a server at WebTV, instead of being kept locally. This means you don't really have much control over them.
Is this a security risk? Probably not. Although I suppose it could be, in the unlikely event that someone "hacked" WebTV Networks. One of the larger cookie concerns among computer users is that if your computer is networked to others, there is a possibility that someone could access your cookie file and read it. WebTV by design is a network of TV-Web boxes. So WebTV users have no choice but to trust that WebTV Networks will keep their information safe from prying eyes.
The main difference between how WebTV and the computer browsers handle cookies is that with the likes of Netscape or Internet Explorer, your cookies are saved to a file that you can control. Many browsers allow users to choose whether to accept or block cookies. And, through a simple series of commands and mouse-clicks, to gobble up your cookies until they're all gone. But the average WebTV user is not yet empowered with such convenient cookie control.
With cookies becoming more appetizing to advertisers and Web site operators, adding these options is of great interest to some WebTV users. But for now, they just aren't part of how our WebTV cookie crumbles.
To Milk This for All It's Worth...
Suffice it to say that there's a lot of ingredients in the online "cookie" recipe. And while this story itself may seem to be of the jumbo cookie variety, it has in fact only touched on a few crumbs. On-line cookies are of a complex batter, if you will. Software and Web site developers, curious individuals, and even the government continually involve themselves in the mix. For example, The Energy Department's Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) recently issued a report about cookie technology. And all the interested parties will surely continue to have their hands in the cookie jar for years to come.
I guess you could say that there aren't any cookie cutter explanations. It's not kids' stuff. So to sum-up, the issues of cookies along that line ... They're a long, long, long, long, long way from Sesame Street.
For more information about cookies, add the following. And maybe two eggs. And beat rigorously:
[Editor's note: Net4TV's log analysis software uses cookies in order to track user paths through our site. Our Privacy Policy tells you how we use the information that we collect.]
