Tracking Cookies- what are they ?

I can't believe after all this time I've never bothered to educate myself about these things. I have just been messing around with Mozilla Firefox version 2.0.0.14 (just telling you as much as I think is necessary). Anyway I came across something called cookies and checked which ones were on my computer. I eventually searched Google and through Yahoo Answers I found out a particular folder of cookies (I don't know if thats the net term ) called 207.net is for a company called Omniture. This happens to be a Tracking Cookie. What is this and should I be afraid that I've been compromised so to speak ?


Sorry if this is looks like a miniature wall of text, and sorry if its something I could've found out through more searching on Google.


[edit on 19-5-2008 by trilateral_insignia] I failed twice

[edit on 19-5-2008 by trilateral_insignia]

This thread on ATS should help...
The conspiracy of "tracking cookie" paranoia

And especially this post.

Cookies are not a threat. I've been online since it was possible to be online, and have never deleted my cookies.

Wow, I feel honoured that one of the site owners has answered my question. Although the conspiracy theorist in me is taking this as "listen here subordinate, keep those cookies never delete them" Like you are part of the Elite Hierarchy of the Internet. Ok den boss I'ze not gon delete em

Seriously though, are you rare ? Is this like once in a lifetime experience ?

You must think I'm crazy, its just that I see you are "site owner" in other words you run this hood!!

Peace and God Bless

I never worry about cookies. What I worry about is some jerk going into my cookies and looking up what sites I visit - not that there's anything incriminating, just a corruption of privacy.

And SkepticOverlord regularly posts in the forums, perhaps not as much as we'd like ( ), but it's not rare.

[edit on 20/5/2008 by C0bzz]

Since you have Mozilla, just go to your options, go to privacy, and click "always clear my private data after closing firefox". It will delete your history though.

reply to post by trilateral_insignia

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Cookies on your pc serve several purposes and most of them make things more convenient for us as we surf the web, particular sites that we visit more than once.
For example, when you log in to ATS it places a cookie in your folder so that if you come back a week later, you dont have to log in again.

There are a lot of people that are especially worried about googles cookies because their expiration date goes up to around 2035, at least it used to.
That means if you went to google today and put in your preferences and you had the same pc and same hard drive and didnt delete the cookie, in 2035, your preferences would remain the same.

Other sites can read your cookies to though, they can get your zip code, email addy, other sites youve visited and other info from a cookie and send you what seems like personalized emails and pop ups (tracking cookies)

That's not true. Only the domain that wrote a cookie, can read a cookie. Also, cookies tend not to contain personalized data, and instead are a unique code that references and data you've provided on the database of the domain that wrote the cookie.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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Yea sure, thats just what they want us to think sketpic, I see you're in on it to though

Seriously though, I wasnt aware that the cookie could only be read from the domain that wrote it, I've already learned something new today lol.