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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.
 
Cache::FileCache(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation				     Cache::FileCache(3pm)

NAME
Cache::FileCache -- implements the Cache interface. DESCRIPTION
The FileCache class implements the Cache interface. This cache stores data in the filesystem so that it can be shared between processes. SYNOPSIS
use Cache::FileCache; my $cache = new Cache::FileCache( { 'namespace' => 'MyNamespace', 'default_expires_in' => 600 } ); See Cache::Cache for the usage synopsis. METHODS
See Cache::Cache for the API documentation. Clear( [$cache_root] ) See Cache::Cache, with the optional $cache_root parameter. Purge( [$cache_root] ) See Cache::Cache, with the optional $cache_root parameter. Size( [$cache_root] ) See Cache::Cache, with the optional $cache_root parameter. OPTIONS
See Cache::Cache for standard options. Additionally, options are set by passing in a reference to a hash containing any of the following keys: cache_root The location in the filesystem that will hold the root of the cache. Defaults to the 'FileCache' under the OS default temp directory ( often '/tmp' on UNIXes ) unless explicitly set. cache_depth The number of subdirectories deep to cache object item. This should be large enough that no cache directory has more than a few hundred objects. Defaults to 3 unless explicitly set. directory_umask The directories in the cache on the filesystem should be globally writable to allow for multiple users. While this is a potential security concern, the actual cache entries are written with the user's umask, thus reducing the risk of cache poisoning. If you desire it to only be user writable, set the 'directory_umask' option to '077' or similar. Defaults to '000' unless explicitly set. PROPERTIES
See Cache::Cache for default properties. (get|set)_cache_root See the definition above for the option cache_root (get|set)_cache_depth See the definition above for the option cache_depth (get|set)_directory_umask See the definition above for the option directory_umask SEE ALSO
Cache::Cache AUTHOR
Original author: DeWitt Clinton <dewitt@unto.net> Last author: $Author: dclinton $ Copyright (C) 2001-2003 DeWitt Clinton perl v5.12.4 2009-03-01 Cache::FileCache(3pm)
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