Individual Risk Management (Personal IT Security) and Browser Cache Management Post: 303033322

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

04-03-2019

Administrator

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.

Neo

View Public Profile for Neo

Visit Neo's homepage!

Find all posts by Neo

LEARN ABOUT SUSE

kcookiejar4

KCOOKIEJAR4(8)							 KDE User's Manual						    KCOOKIEJAR4(8)

NAME

       kcookiejar4 - KDE HTTP cookie daemon

SYNOPSIS

       kcookiejar4 [--help] [Generic-options] [Qt-options] [KDE-options] [--shutdown] [--remove domain] [--remove-all] [--reload-config]

DESCRIPTION

       kcookiejar4 handles the HTTP cookies providing a D-BUS service to store/retrieve/clean cookies.

GENERIC OPTIONS

       --author
	      Show author information.

       --help Show help about options.

       --help-all
	      Show all options.

       --help-kde
	      Show KDE specific options.

       --help-qt
	      Show Qt specific options.

       --license
	      Show license information.

       -v--version
	      Show version information

APPLICATION OPTIONS

       --shutdown
	      Shut down cookie jar and the D-BUS service.

       --remove domain
	      Removes cookies for domain from the cookie jar.

       --remove-all
	      Removes all the cookies from the cookie jar.

       --reaload-config
	      Reloads the configuration file.

USAGE

       KDE web browser konqueror uses kcookiejar4 for storing and managing cookies using the D-Bus service kcookiejar4 provides.

       When kcookiejar4 is started without parameters, it provides a D-BUS service to handle HTTP cookies.

       When  kcookiejar4  is started with some parameters, it does adittional tasks to the cookies jar it provides, like removing the cookies from
       one domain.

SEE ALSO

       kdeoptions(7), qtoptions(7)

BUGS

       There are probably tons of bugs. Use bugs.kde.org: http://bugs.kde.org to report them.

AUTHORS

       Waldo Bastian <bastian@kde.org>, Dawit Alemayehu <adawit@kde.org>.

								    2008-10-14							    KCOOKIEJAR4(8)