Until this week, Google set the expiration date for cookies it places on your PC at 31 years from now. Buckling to the complaints of privacy advocates, Google now kills them after 2 YEARS (unless you're among the 100% of Web users who visit Google more than once every two years, in which case those cookies will "auto-renew")
(props to Garett Rogers)
1:38 PM * PERMALINK * 1 comments
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Comments:
In this case a "privacy advocate" means someone who doesn't use a decent web browser, or who doesn't know which web browsers are decent, or who doesn't have a clue how to disable cookies for sites they don't like. Cookies are only a privacy threat if you don't know what you're doing.
Firefox has this nice feature that forces all cookies to be session cookies by default, which I find to be a good medium. Sites can track me until I close my browser, but I don't have to mess with cookie settings per-site (unless I want persistent login to some sites). And of course I can still blacklist the worst offenders.
The web is built on standards, which means that it's incredibly easy to discard the parts of the standard you don't want. Why can't people use that to their advantage instead of throwing a hissy fit when a company does something completely neutralizable? This energy is better spent on things that are actually shafting consumers (*COUGH*DRM*COUGH*) rather than minor annoyances that can be dismissed at the click of a button.
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