If you rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s privacy settings to control cookies on your computer, you may want to rethink that strategy.
Large numbers of Web sites, including giants like Facebook, appear to be using a loophole that circumvents I.E.’s ability to block cookies, according to researchers at CyLab at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Engineering.
A technical paper (note: clicking on the link will initiate a download of a pdf) published by the researchers says that a third of the more than 33,000 sites they studied have technical errors that cause I.E. to allow cookies to install, even if the browser has been set to reject them. Of the 100 most visited destinations on the Internet, 21 sites had the errors, including Facebook, several of Microsoft’s own sites, Amazon, IMDB, AOL, Mapquest, GoDaddy and Hulu.
Typos and honest mistakes likely explain many of the errors, says Lorrie Faith Cranor, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory and one of the paper’s authors. But she estimates that more than half represent deliberate efforts to keep I.E. from blocking certain types of third-party cookies based on privacy policies.
Cookies are used to store information about a user or computer’s Web use so sites can customize that user’s experience, including what ads they see. So-called persistent or tracking cookies are data placed not by the site visited, but by other third-party Web sites that have placed content or advertising on the visited Web page. These types of cookies can stay on computers for long periods of time and gather data about surfing habits, and have long raised hackles among those concerned about privacy online.
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