Site Privacy issues

John Lawson wrote: "absurdum", if my grasp of Latin isn't quite as rusty as I fear it may be. I don't know, it just seems that it's people who either don't understand how web browsers and non-static sites work, or relative newbies to the Internet, seem to shout and rave about cookies "OMG, that site sent me a *cookie*! I'm being hacked! They're going to steal my credit card number and my pr0n stash!" Pretty much any site that does anything "cleverer" than serve up static pages is going to need some means by which the server can keep state - HTTP doesn't really have a mechanism for this, since the connection is closed once the page has been sent. Now, if you want the server to have some idea of where a given client has come from *within your own site*, you can either fake it with hidden form fields (not always possible, but worth a try), a big long identifier in the GET request (ugly, and prone to error), or use a cookie. It's not a fantastic way of doing it, but it's the "least worst" in the absence of properly stateful connections. Of course, if you don't want to use them, that's just fine. You may well miss out on a few sites, but that's entirely your choice. It would be a shame if you did so, without really understanding *why* other than some vague idea that "cookies are bad". You may also wish to try a browser like Firefox, which lets you allow or deny cookies on a site-by-site basis. I tend to use it to block cookies from the major banner-ad providers, except on sites where I really think the adverts are justified - some content *does* need to be paid for, and if the sites want to use banner ads and they are not too obnoxious, sometime's I'll even click on them. Heigh-ho. I'm sure I won't convince you out of your resolutely cookie-free mode of thought. At least I haven't descended to mis-spelt Latin and patronising remarks about teenagers. Just to give you some frame of reference, I am probably around the young-to-median point of the age range of this list (actually, what *is* the age range? It would be interesting to know) - old enough to remember the days before sub-?100 home computers, and *just* old enough to fondly remember Honeywell CP-6 at university. Not that I was supposed to be on there until 3rd year, being an EE student. They only really let the Comp Sci bods play with it. Just depends which sysadmin you take to the pub... Gordon.