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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Security and usability
From:       Roland Seuhs <roland.seuhs () hasos ! com>
Date:       2003-08-18 12:58:06
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Am Montag, 18. August 2003 13:57 schrieb Daniel Naber:
> On Monday 18 August 2003 12:41, Roland Seuhs wrote:
> > Has there been a single recorded event in which a cookie has caused
> > actual harm to some user? I don't think so.
> 
> You're confusing security and privacy. With cookies, websites can track you
> and save that data.

Exactly that's what cookies are for.

> They don't know *who* you are, but maybe in two years
> they get access to data that let's them assign your real name to your
> cookie. And then suddenly you are not anonymous anymore, even the things
> you did two years ago can be connected to your name. Is that "harm"? Yes,
> I think so.

The same could be said about IP-numbers so we all had to start using anonymizing \
proxies for everything.

The difference is that IP-numbers are actually a lot better than cookies (you can go \
to any ISP and will get the real name connected to an IP-number and a certain time, \
you will not however get a real name connected to some cookie) if you want to find \
out about somebody's identitiy, while using for storing settings is inappropriate.

So I'm really very sorry when I don't see how annoying user's with cookie-warnings is \
increasing privacy.

-- 
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.

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