The conspiracy of "tracking cookie" paranoia, page 2

Originally posted by Flyer
Because they offer no use to the end user and people value their privacy.

Let's start by having a look at the current policies of the firm most-often associated with "cookie evilness," the firm currently with the resources available to perform cookie-based user-tracking, and the firm Google is buying: DoubleClick:
www.doubleclick.com...

What is the DoubleClick cookie doing on my computer?
The information that the DART cookie helps to give marketers includes the number of unique users their advertisements were displayed to, how many users clicked on their Internet ads or paid listings, and which ads or paid listings they clicked on.

What information is collected by a client using DoubleClick’s ad serving technology?
the date, the time, the website to which the ad or image was delivered, the cookie ID to which the ad was shown, the operating system which the browser was using – will be recorded.

Does DoubleClick itself do anything with this ad-serving information?
No. The information that is recorded on the DoubleClick servers by our clients’ use of our technology belongs to our clients.

Does DoubleClick sell the ad serving information to other companies?
No. The data that DoubleClick’s servers record during ad serving belong to DoubleClick’s clients, and DoubleClick cannot and does not sell that information to other companies.

Now, DoubleClick was indeed involved in trying to build a contextually-aligned database of user activity back in the late 1990's, and that has been the catalyst of much of the contemporary cookie hype (back then, I stopped using them because of it). However, after pressure from many sources, including industry groups like the DMA and IAB, firms like DoubleClick no longer attempt to profile users based on their site history. They use their cookies to keep track of which ads you see, and use the audience psychographics/demographics of the site you're visiting to target the right ad.

It didnt help that these companies were tracking you without your knowledge,

Not quite true. At the time DoubleClick attempted their effort of profiling users based on browsing patterns (on sites that served DART ads), they were very public about what they were trying to do, how they were trying to do it, and what the intended outcome was. Most people didn't like it... but to be fair, there was a substantial amount of information made public about it.

But still... in the end... after all that... assuming the deep tracking is happening... what is so terrible about a random ID code, not identifiable to you, correlating to a partial list of sites you've visited? Maybe it's just me, but in the vast spectrum of contemporary privacy intrusions, this is spectacularly minor... if that.