JavaScript considered harmful

Steve Holden sholden at holdenweb.com
Tue Jan 8 13:11:40 EST 2002


"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1010510232.1351.python-list at python.org...
>
>     AMK> unsophisticated users won't go disabling cookies anyway
>
>     Oleg> For them there are corporate policies and corporate
>     Oleg> proxies/firewalls.
>
> I don't run a proxy/firewall at home, nor do we have a family policy about
> cookies (although my 12-year old has recently taken a liking to Trader
Joe's
> Chocolate Cat cookies).  I'm the only person in my family that could be
> considered "sophisticated" in the sense Andrew used it.  Cookies are often
> used outside of corporations, and the risks, while of perhaps smaller
> absolute magnitude (on a case-by-case basis) than those of Fortune 500
> companies,

Do they get Fortune Cookies?

>             are no less important.  Browsers that manipulate cookies need
to
> provide sensible default behavior.
>
Yup. But just because a browser has no business sending cookies back to an
advertiser's web site isn't going to make Microsoft browsers do the Right
Thing (tm) -- sounds like IE 6 has got a little more sophisticated, but I
don't know whether third party cookies are off by default (which they should
be) and if so for which Zones.

In time, of course, there will be home "firewall" devices that will
implement the necessary safeguards. Sadly we at least thirty years* away
from mass understanding of the problems, and so thirty years away from
devices which can present the user with a meaningful choice.

regards
 Steve

*Thirty years ago it was the doctors who would get questions at parties like
"Would you take a look at my ankle, I've been getting this pain...". Now us
geeks get questions like "Would you take a look at my computer, this dialog
box keeps popping up...". Nowadays I avoid such nonsense by telling people
I'm a doctor :-)

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/








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