Sponsored Content
The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Individual Risk Management (Personal IT Security) and Browser Cache Management Post 303033322 by Neo on Wednesday 3rd of April 2019 07:56:15 AM
Old 04-03-2019
Quote:
Originally Posted by bakunin

You asked for a scenario where this might pose a risk to the user: let us say i search Google for ways to overcome personal debt repeatedly. If one of the "advertisement partners" of Google is the next bank and if Google is able to identify me across sessions i may well have lowered my credit rating effectively by doing that research - even if it might not even be for me. Given, that is a constructed example and includes a lot of conjecture - but the girl getting advertisement for baby food before even her parents were aware of her pregnancy was real. It is not a lot different (not in scope and definitely not in technical background) from what i presented here.
Yes, that first example is "constructed" and not really realistic.

The second is a real example, but that example is not because of "cookies and caches"... it was because the girl had made purchases with Target and so Target (a retail chain in the US) sent her a paper flyer in the mail based on her purchases.

Quote:
Pole identified 25 products that when purchased together indicate a women is likely pregnant. The value of this information was that Target could send coupons to the pregnant woman at an expensive and habit-forming period of her life.
Neither of your examples are related to clearing cookies and caches.

The first is just a fantasy based without facts or details.

The second is well documented NOT to be related to cookies or web caches, but is related to the computer records of the purchases of the girl in the story. The article ends with an apology:

Quote:
On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. "I had a talk with my daughter," he said. "It turns out there's been some activities in my house I haven't been completely aware of. She's due in August. I owe you an apology."
Can we please stick to the facts of "cookies" and "caches" which you advised people to clear "for their own good".

Neither of the scenarios you posted are relevant to that. I am sorry to inform!!

On the other hand, even if the girl in the "real story" above cleared her cookies and cache, she would have still got the coupons because she was targeted (marketing) because of her purchase history with the company in their database, not because of "cookies" or "caches" in browsers.
 
PPI::Cache(3)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					     PPI::Cache(3)

NAME
PPI::Cache - The PPI Document Caching Layer SYNOPSIS
# Set the cache use PPI::Cache path => '/var/cache/ppi-cache'; # Manually create a cache my $Cache = PPI::Cache->new( path => '/var/cache/perl/class-PPI', readonly => 1, ); DESCRIPTION
"PPI::Cache" provides the default caching functionality for PPI. It integrates automatically with PPI itself. Once enabled, any attempt to load a document from the filesystem will be cached via cache. Please note that creating a PPI::Document from raw source or something other object will not be cached. Using PPI::Cache The most common way of using "PPI::Cache" is to provide parameters to the "use" statement at the beginning of your program. # Load the class but do not set a cache use PPI::Cache; # Use a fairly normal cache location use PPI::Cache path => '/var/cache/ppi-cache'; Any of the arguments that can be provided to the "new" constructor can also be provided to "use". METHODS
new param => $value, ... The "new" constructor creates a new standalone cache object. It takes a number of parameters to control the cache. path The "path" param sets the base directory for the cache. It must already exist, and must be writable. readonly The "readonly" param is a true/false flag that allows the use of an existing cache by a less-privileged user (such as the web user). Existing documents will be retrieved from the cache, but new documents will not be written to it. Returns a new "PPI::Cache" object, or dies on error. path The "path" accessor returns the path on the local filesystem that is the root of the cache. readonly The "readonly" accessor returns true if documents should not be written to the cache. get_document $md5sum | $source The "get_document" method checks to see if a Document is stored in the cache and retrieves it if so. store_document $Document The "store_document" method takes a PPI::Document as argument and explicitly adds it to the cache. Returns true if saved, or "undef" (or dies) on error. FIXME (make this return either one or the other, not both) TO DO
- Finish the basic functionality - Add support for use PPI::Cache auto-setting $PPI::Document::CACHE SUPPORT
See the support section in the main module. AUTHOR
Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org> COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2005 - 2011 Adam Kennedy. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module. perl v5.18.2 2011-02-25 PPI::Cache(3)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 06:08 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy