From: Sverker K. Hogberg <skh2101@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 21:11:01 -0400

User Deletion of Browser Cookies

Slashdot has a story linking to two articles that note that (1) 58% of 
users intentionally or unintentionally deleted cookies at some point in 
2004 and (2) some marketers are trying to get around this by using a 
Flash-based "Persistent Identification Element."

This raises the question of whether anonymity "self-help" is a 
sufficient solution to the problem of empowering people to avoid being 
tracked and profiled. If it is merely a matter of an technological arms 
race between corporations and consumers, there is no reason to think 
that consumers will necessarily win out. As the browser-cookie article 
indicates, corporations have absolutely no interest in respecting users' 
interest in anonymity:  "The JupiterResearch report provides advice to 
site operators for how to cope with the decline in accuracy of visitor 
measurement and predicts that Web analytics vendors will adapt their 
tools in the face of a consumer landscape that makes established 
measurement practices unreliable."

This seems to be an area where robust open source software (such as 
Firefox) is particularly important. Open source vendors are far more 
responsive to user interests and concerns and can serve as a substitute 
for and/or popularize the self-help measures that are otherwise only 
available to the tech-savvy.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/04/177238&tid=95&tid=158

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