COO_kie

2-12-96. FinTim:

   "This bug in your PC is a smart cookie."

      Netscape Navigator contains a little-known wrinkle that
      increases the power of companies to find out who their
      customers are and what they are up to. It allows
      companies to track which Web pages an individual looks
      at, when, for how long, and in what order. The
      information is stored on the customer's computer as
      "persistent client-state hypertext transfer protocol
      cookies".

   2-12-96. WSJ:

   "Consumer Privacy on Internet Goes Public."

      The advertising industry's response to the volatile
      issue of consumer privacy is drawing howls of protest
      from consumer advocates. The battle is over what should
      marketers be allowed to do with personal information
      they gather from consumers visiting Web sites. Marketers
      "want to have dossiers on people with incredible detail
      so they can pick and choose what they send to you."

   "Invention Machine's Software Wins Orders for Picking
   Brains of Inventors."

      A software program is being snapped up by a growing
      number of America's biggest companies to provide
      inventing partners for their engineers. The program
      codifies the invention principles behind some two
      million international patents and the inventive
      techniques of some of the world's greatest inventors.
      Mr. Tsourikov said the product grew out of his early
      studies under Genrich Altshuller, who posited that
      invention isn't a random process but has a certain
      algorithm which drives it.


   COO_kie

John Young wrote:
> 
>    2-12-96. FinTim:
> 
>    "This bug in your PC is a smart cookie."
> 
>       Netscape Navigator contains a little-known wrinkle that
>       increases the power of companies to find out who their
>       customers are and what they are up to. It allows
>       companies to track which Web pages an individual looks
>       at, when, for how long, and in what order. The
>       information is stored on the customer's computer as
>       "persistent client-state hypertext transfer protocol
>       cookies".
> 
>    2-12-96. WSJ:

  There is a lot of confusion about cookies.  They do not allow
a web site to access private information such as the user's
e-mail address or other preferences as was recently reported
in Web Review.  They only store information that the web site
already has.  If you never give a web site private information
about you or your identity, they will not be able to match your
access patterns to your identity.

	--Jeff

-- 
Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist
Netscape Communication Corporation
jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw
Any opinions expressed above are mine.