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cookies, cont.
Yes, but why so many cookies? I can understand one cookie for tracking (and it seems that Frontpage does this by default, because I think I get alerted of one every time I visit a Frontpage-designed site). But why does one site need to send me 5 or more cookies? (This doesn't even count third-party cookies from advertisers.)
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Maybe give some free advice about: Internet & Web Design?
For most sites, it's probably unnecessarily, especially if you're finding that it's just default on Frontpage.
Some forum software justifiably use a lot of cookies, however. I just used <a href="[Link](Mouse over link to see full location) cookie manager to take a look at how many cookies I'm storing on a board I admin. It's an <a href="[Link](Mouse over link to see full location) board</a> and it appears to store five cookies, plus one for each forum.
1 - member_id
(this is to store the member id, so it doesn't have to query a database every time)
2 - pass_hash
(this is probably used to confirm that the user hasn't faked their member_id)
3 - session_id
4 - topicsread
5 - hide_sess (this is to get rid of the session in the url)
And then for each forum I read, I get a cookie called fread_#
I don't particularly like this way, but it seems pretty standard across the browsers. This information could be stored on the servers instead, but it would require a lot more computing energy, so it's probably best this way.
For sites that aren't storing and passing a lot of individual information like forums do, there really can't be a good reason for so many cookies. But there are some sites for which there is a good explanation.
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Cookies are mostly harmless, but it sure gets annoying thinking that all of these people are tracking your information somehow.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Go to this site and download a nice little (free) application called CookieWall. It will detect all new cookies and you can have it notify you and ask you whether you want to keep it or always block it. Most of them I set to block, but on sites I log in (such as this one) you need to have it keep the cookie.
Usually I don't run into more than two or three per site, though three is kind of rare. Most of the time it is the advertisers. For me, I have 50 blocked and 15 to always keep. Just use CookieWall and you won't have to worry about any one cookie more than once. It's really easy to use and it does the job well.
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I have no idea. I'd never make a site that would send five cookies. I don't think I would, anyway.
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