Clash of Internet Privacy Policies. A good article from the NY Times about how new "automatic" settings in Microsoft's IE browser are making it very difficult for large scale sites on the web to serve their pages without jumping through hoops. I'm all for protecting privacy on the web, but in my opinion, the "Privacy Mafia" has gone overboard in scaring everyday surfers about abuses of their privacy on the net. At Medscape, we deal with this issue every single day, and having folks nervous about who's placing cookies on their machine makes it extremely difficult to deliver the level of service that we know our readers want.
Let's face it: With the amount of traffic that a large scale site gets, not only does the site not necessarily care where you, Mr. Smith, goes, but I've never seen a company with the processing power and knowhow to actually make sense of that data in a way that can do harm to you. In short...relax. By all means, read privacy policies and avoid sites who have policies with which you feel uncomfortable, but don't assume that cookies are harmful to you. Most companies that are placing cookies on your machine are doing so in order to provide you with better service.
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