Site Privacy issues

I'm going to jump in here (hopefully briefly). I am not a fan of cookies, and run with them turned off by default. I am also a user of cash, for many of the same reasons. I'd like to draw an analogy between cookies and meatspace transactions. When I go into a a store to buy something, I like to whip out my cash, pay for the item, and be on my way. I am not interested in forming a "relationship" with the shipkeeper. Likewise, I like my web browsing to be quick and anonymous, unless there is a good reason for the interaction to be otherwise. To me, cookies are the web equivalent to those obnoxious shopper cards that have been all the rage lately with store owners. Now when I go to buy coffee at the store, the clerk asks if I have a store card, even though (or especially because?) I am paying in cash. If I don't have one, (s)he immediately offers me one. Why does (s)he do this? Is it because they want to identify repeat customers, and offer them all kinds of discounts? No. That might be why customers do it, but it isn't why stores do it. (S)he does this because the store wants to de-anonymize the transaction. They want to track my buying habits and offer customized advertising (not to me, to the advertisers!), in the form of coupons on the back of the sales slip, junk mail, and (in the case of Safeway and Amazon, at least) later when I browse the web. This is the real reason many sites want to place a cookie -- they want to identify me, profile me, and offer me tailor made propoganda for a variety of causes. This always sounds like a great idea to them. No thanks. I am also aware that transparent GIF images and other technologies replace cookies, and are much more difficult to suppress. The number of sites that need to do anything "cleverer" than serve static pages is quite small. If I am actually going to do business with a web site (and I do, with a few), then I will turn on cookies, etc. My especial peeve is with the sites that really are only serving static pages, but want to place a cookie anyway. There is no good reason why I should want them to do this. One of the assumptions that lurks behind this mindset is that, although our needs converge on a particular interaction, it is important to remember that others have their own interests at heart, not mine (rightly so), and that their interests and mine will frequently be in conflict. To summarize, I think of cookies like those store cards, and refuse them for a lot of the same reasons. Late 40s, myself. Don't know, but from the small sample I have, that puts me within a few years of a lot of others. Vince