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As an aside to my thread on advertising, i see more and more sites demanding i accept 'strictly necessary cookies'. So what are these and why are they necessary?

They're cookies that are essential for the website to function correctly. That can include things like tracking for forward and back pages to work, shopping carts, and anything else where the website needs to know something about what you have previously done on the site during that session in order for it to work.

A while back laws were introduced that say websites have to notify you if they're saving or retrieving data from your PC, which is what cookies do.

Unfortunately every bloody site on the internet uses cookies, so naturally every bloody site is now supposed to warn you of the cookies they're going to read and write to your computer.

Some cookies are required for certain sites to function, you can block cookies through your browser but some sites may stop working properly.

Some browsers have an option to delete all cookies at the end of a session, which maybe will reduce some creepy sites that like to spy on you, but those creepy sites probably use other means to track you anyway.

Chocolate chip cookies are a necessity. I like mine with pecans, not walnuts.

But, yes, like the others have said they're the cookies that the website needs in order to function, usually anything related to shopping carts, forms, etc.

Ok, good, useful, non snakry answers, much appreciated.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Chocolate chip cookies are a necessity. I like mine with pecans, not walnuts.

But, yes, like the others have said they're the cookies that the website needs in order to function, usually anything related to shopping carts, forms, etc.

Philistine. Snickerdoodle, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut, or No-Bake are the only cookies that are a necessity...

 Just Tony wrote:
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut

These, from Subway, when they are fresh, are the best. Otherwise it's hard to see past chocolate chip with salted caramel.

So i've got a subsidiary question: i've loads of blocking software in my browser: is this going to carry on blocking stuff even if I accept it? Would be handy not to have to worry about it. Also, is it worth regularly clearing out cookies (or maybe I can set my browser - firefox - to do this automatically)?

Just always use incognito/private mode and you'll never need to worry about it again. All the cookies are nuked automatically when you close a tab.

 PaddyMick wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut

These, from Subway, when they are fresh, are the best. Otherwise it's hard to see past chocolate chip with salted caramel.

So i've got a subsidiary question: i've loads of blocking software in my browser: is this going to carry on blocking stuff even if I accept it? Would be handy not to have to worry about it. Also, is it worth regularly clearing out cookies (or maybe I can set my browser - firefox - to do this automatically)?

Firefox has recently been advertising itself as the privacy browser, so it has some options (for one, it has the "facebook container" which is supposed to stop FB spying on what you're doing outside of FB).

But anyway, yeah, click on the 3 horizontal lines in the top right of firefox, then click on "options" then "privacy and security" on the left side of the window.

There's options to either disallow cookies entirely (which may mess up some websites) or an option to clear cookies automatically when FF closes (which should still allow sites to run fine, but the data will be deleted when you close FF, I assume that means you need to log back into websites every time you reopen FF).

Cheers both

I like that this is two simultaneous conversations about cookies and cookies

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I like that this is two simultaneous conversations about cookies and cookies

I think if websites gave us actual cookies to eat, we might care less about virtual cookies to track us. Would you sell your privacy for a box of Thin Mints?

Lol no.

But samoas...

At any rate, it is some comfort that no human is reading the data. It is computers collecting it and using it for algorithms; there is no mouth breathing creeper watching you buy things on Amazon.

NinthMusketeer wrote:Lol no.

But samoas...

At any rate, it is some comfort that no human is reading the data. It is computers collecting it and using it for algorithms; there is no mouth breathing creeper watching you buy things on Amazon.

If it was an actual person I imagine they'd get bored of me in 30 seconds

Nevelon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I like that this is two simultaneous conversations about cookies and cookies

I think if websites gave us actual cookies to eat, we might care less about virtual cookies to track us. Would you sell your privacy for a box of Thin Mints?

It's always important to clear the cookies from your cache/case.

I think an actual person would gain enlightenment, schizophrenia, and the Mark of Tzeentch inside 9 hours of going through data feeds.

Cookie feeds

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I think an actual person would gain enlightenment, schizophrenia, and the Mark of Tzeentch inside 9 hours of going through data feeds.

Cookie feeds

I'm not as superhero movie fan, in fact the only good thing in 2020 was not having ads for 3-4 of them shoved down my throat constantly at every turn, but i am familiar with 'Age of Ultron" and suspect that if a sentient being unfamiliar with humanity got on the internet for a few hours it would end up saying "Yeah, they gotta go."

But on topic, I am really getting tired of looking up one thing once, and for a week or two every site i go to there's an ad for it on the banner. It's like "We know what you do on the net, we know every site you search for, we follow you with ads for it." Yeah, no creepy stalky vibe there, huh?

People are so scared of 'duh gubmint" spying on them, where's the concern when big business does it? Don't they realize the government, the fbi, irs, whole alphabet soup list, can simply ask a business to give them information on a person with no court order or warrant because you """agreed""" to that when you used the net? (Triple quotes intentional.)

 Matt Swain wrote:
People are so scared of 'duh gubmint" spying on them, where's the concern when big business does it? Don't they realize the government, the fbi, irs, whole alphabet soup list, can simply ask a business to give them information on a person with no court order or warrant because you """agreed""" to that when you used the net? (Triple quotes intentional.)

Yes, people are concerned about businesses gathering and retaining data.

If you haven't heard those concerns, you maybe just haven't researched it enough. As I mentioned earlier, Firefox basically advertises itself as a privacy focused browser these days, with "facebook containers" to impede that specific business from stalking you.

There's both concerns that the businesses will hand over the data to governments who will then use it against people, AND there's concern that many private companies don't properly secure the data and it'll get hacked. A huge amount of personal data has been leaked to hackers that way.

One of the ones I find a bit silly is VPN services. Not that the idea of a VPN service is bad, but you're just shifting your trust to the VPN service not to sell or leak your data.

It's worth watching or reading some interviews with Edward Snowden, they tend to be very long because he goes into a lot of detail, but then the detail is good to know why individuals should be concerned both about the government collecting data and private businesses doing it.

Double Chocolate I would say are more compulsory than strictly necessary.

Maybe we need to go the opposite way; have companies collect MORE data, store MORE data, and there will be so much of it that any hack is unlikely to get anything useful for baking up scam cookies!