Thursday, March 10, 2005

google's cookie recipe

Greg Duffy is spending *way* too much time at his computer... he's been delving into Google's cookie code, and he figured out some interesting things - like how to read entire books online using Google Print. He apparently also attracted some Attention From Above: his site just *poof* disappeared from Google searches after he put his results on his webpage. Now you can't find gregduffy.com by Googling 'greg duffy'. Bonk :)

Firefox is fast enough that aside from upgrades I haven't tweaked it since I got it... so earlier this week when I checked it for the first time, I discovered that my cookie cache was huge, thousands of sites tracking my every online move. I looked at the cookies because I noticed that ads on random webpages seemed to be rather pointedly targeted at me, often covering stores that are geographically near me, or near places I've looked up on Mapquest and Qwestdex :|. If the details of how a cookie is stored are known, it is in some cases possible for one site to view the cookie of another.

Datamining another site's cookies to make your site's advertising more effective... it had to happen eventually.