More on cookies

[David G. Risner]

On Tue, 3 Sep 1996, Michael Haseltine wrote:

> At 08:16 AM 9/3/96 -0700, you wrote:
> >
> >..the example then goes on with a Customer ID kind of application. I 
> >could see this in Z39.50 gateway applications to track a browser users 
> >session ID; to avoid having students log in to InLibrary WWW clients for 
> >otherwise passworded databases...
> 
> The problem I have with finding good uses for cookies is that if we allow
> desirable uses, then we will be providing a mechanism for undesirable uses.
> Think of a cookie as you standing at the door of your library taking
> everyone's name and phone number and then checking when they leave the
> library. You get the valuable information of how long they spend in the
> library to help you in 'serving' them better. Would you do it, and what do
> you think your patrons would think about it?

Actually, this is wrong.  It would be more like if you gave each person a
number as they walked in the door, recording what time you gave out the
number.  Then, as they left, you would collect the number, recording the
time again.

The big difference here is that personal anonymity is still there.  Of
course, using cookies is even less of a problem than the above example
since it requires only the time to pass a handful of characters across the
Internet to your computer and back again to the server later on. 

If you look at the expiration on these cookies, by the way, most of them
are a couple of days.

---
David G. Risner
Network Services Administrator
Southwestern University School of Law, Los Angeles, CA
drisner at swlaw.edu  213/738-6762