I HATE COOKIES !!
From Cookie Central:
cookiecentral.com
So you're surfing the web with Netscape alerting you when encountering a cookie, and you are frequently warned that "focalink.com" was trying to place information in your Cookie file.
As far as you know, you had never visited focalink.com. The warning came up only when you are viewing seemingly unrelated Web sites, and the information focalink.com wanted to store looked like a list of graphics files. Who are focalink.com, and why are they trying to give you a Cookie?
The answer, after some investigation, can be found at the top of the Web pages which you're viewing: the advertisements. Eventhough you are viewing, say, lycos site, some of the ads were being retrieved from a server at Focalink Communications Inc. Other users have encountered similar mysterious messages, from sites like ad.doubleclick.net (DoubleClick Inc.) , interse.com (Interse Corp.) and smartad.
All of these organizations bill themselves as "targeted marketing" companies. What they are doing is managing the presentation of advertisements to users.
From Netscape's "Smart Browsing" FAQ's:
home.netscape.com
I'm concerned about privacy. Is What's Related tracking my use of the web?
No personal information about you is gathered when you use What's Related. Only the URL you are viewing and your current web address (it changes every time you connect) is sent to the Netscape system so that it can send you a list of related sites.
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You know what, this all kind of SUCKS. Data mining, cookies, the list goes on. Who cares? I DO!!!
Why should we participate in target marketing??? It is so easy on the Internet, it just runs in the background while you surf. Kind of like the Nelson Ratings, but no work on your part.
You don't get paid to supply these organizations with your precious / valuable data, all they are doing is making your life easier so you can see adds geared up for your lifestyle. It use to cost allot of money to do this before the Internet came along.
WELL....The day they start PAYING me to use the Internet is the day I will turn ON my Cookies, turn ON Smart Browsing, and participate IN polls, and surveys.
The GREAT thing about living in a free society, we can TURN IT OFF....... that's IF you know what's going on behind the scenes. So start learning.
Until the day comes when I get paid for my service of supplying marketing data, I just want to thank Netscape / Microsoft for the FREE data mining browsers.
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