Q&A: Google's new cookie policy
Updated on 17 July 2007
Google announces it is to significantly reduce the length of time that cookies reside on a user's computer.
The internet giant says that in the coming months it will start issuing cookies - small pieces of data that are stored on a computer - that expire within two years.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a piece of data in text form, that is sent by a server to a web browser, then sent back to the browser each time it accesses that server.
Cookies remind the sever of a user's preferences from the last time he or she visited a particular site.
What is the benefit of cookies?
To quote from the Google website -
"Cookies remind us of your preferences from the last time you visited our site. For example, Google uses our so-called 'PREF cookie' to remember our users' basic preferences, such as the fact that a user wants search results in English, no more than 10 results on a given page, or a SafeSearch setting to filter out exlicit sexual content."
What are the disadvantage of cookies?
The main concern relates to privacy. Web page components such as images may not necessarily be stored on the server where the page resides.
Wikipedia explains that third-party cookies allow companies to track a user across more than one site - for example, an advertising company running a banner ad at the top of someone's web page can track a user across all pages where it has placed advertising.
Such third-party cookies allow the advertiser, for example, to create a profile of the user, in turn permitting it to be more specific in the sort of advertising it directs towards that user.
Both the United States and the EU have introduced legislation to restrict the setting of cookies. And browsers such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox now allow the user to block third-party cookies if they want to.
There is also a possibility of cookie theft, where data traffic on a network is intercepted by a third party computer, and of computer poisoning, where cookie values are modified by an attacker before being sent back from the user to the server.
What are the privacy implications of cookies?
To quote the Junkbusters website: "Cookies tell marketeers what junk to push at you". They may also reveal details of your computer, such as what hardware and software you are using. And if you have typed in your email address into forms, for example while registering at a site, that may become accessible via a database.
The truth is that the use of cookies undoubtedly makes using the internet more convenient and efficient. But each time they are used, we are exposed to a possible loss of privacy.
As far as Google is concerned, the decision to make its cookies auto-expire after two years may simply be academic. The fact is that for user's Google cookie to expire, he or she will have to avoid the Google site that initiated it for 24 months. Now, when did you last use Google?
