I heard some firewalls and browsers disable cookies, and I think I may have heard blocking POST data. What are reasons a company may want to block cookies? (and alternatively post data. Which I am not interested in ATM.)
+1
A:
Cookies are used to keep state on the client and as such can be used to track the users across one or more sites. If for some reason the user or admin doesn't want that disabling cookies will prevent the server from storing cookies at the client. A lot of websites will not work as expected if cookies are turned off on the client, but there's really nothing you can do except explain to the user that cookies are needed.
Brian Rasmussen
2009-08-25 17:16:57
A:
I disable cookies from sites I don't trust (yet). I double disable them when the sites want the cookies to hang around until kingdom come (A.K.A. January 2038, or later). If I don't expect to have ongoing interactions with a site, perhaps because I've just looked at it for the first and only time via a hyperlink in an article, I make the cookies session-only (Firefox allows that; I assume other browsers do too) if I don't disallow them altogether.
Jonathan Leffler
2009-08-25 17:18:02
How do you make them session only in firefox? Is it the 'Until i close firefox' option?
acidzombie24
2009-08-25 17:21:45
@acidzombie24: more or less. I have Firefox ask before accepting cookies. It offers me options to cancel/deny, accept for session, accept always (and a.n.other option, IIRC), plus there's a check box for 'always use this option for this site'. This means I get to see when new sites are setting cookies. In the Preferences/Privacy tab, the option I use is 'ask me every time', but I don't get asked as often as that might imply.
Jonathan Leffler
2009-08-25 19:34:21