Re: Bloody "cookies" and yahoo

From: Chris L Peterson (clp_at_alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: 10/26/04 

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:27:00 GMT

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:05:34 -0400, Rich <rightwing@america1st.com> wrote:

>I was on one of the yahoo astro groups and the stupid thing
>kept prompting me to take a cookie (4 different ones each
>time I accessed a post!). So finally, I relented, let it give me
>one, then another one. Within 10 minutes this SPAM astro
>stuff showed up on my screen.
>
>http://skyinsight.net/indexstd.html
>
>Well, moderator of that site, I will NEVER visit it now.
>
>IMO, a site should issue one cookie, if needed, for itself only.
>Instead, they hide the true origin and turn your browser into
>a free for all. The next step is browser highjacking which has
>happened to me twice already.

This is not browser hijacking. All that happened (if I understand correctly) is
that you got some targeted ads presented by Yahoo when you were browsing a Yahoo
site. Hardly a big deal.

If you are regularly using a Yahoo list, have it send email. Then you never have
to see any ads. And of course, make sure you have your browser configured to
suppress popups (all major browsers let you do this) and make sure your email
client is configured to only display plain text.

You can't really blame Yahoo for putting up targeted ads- that's what pays the
way of this free (and generally very good) service. I use a cookie blocker, but
allow Yahoo to set them (for convenience when accessing file and picture areas)
and I've never had a single piece of spam, a popup, attempted hijacking, or
anything at all like that associated with Yahoo.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

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