December 28th, 1999

[6:00 AM] Don't Want Your Oreos In Your Milk? Block Those Cookies by Staff OnePointOh has released a new version of their cookie blocking utility NoCookie. The new version sports new features and abilities. According to OnePointOh: OnePointOh today released the 2nd edition of the most popular mac cookie blocker software "NoCookie". NoCookie lets the user disable and re-enable the cookie file of Netscape's Navigator application. Furthermore NoCookie v2 finally allows to inspect every single cookie name and value stored on the disk. "The success of NoCookie just shows that new technologies touching the users privacy have to give more control to the user" said Chriss Lass, President of 1.0 technologies at today's press conference in Germany. "People want to decide themselves what is stored on their computers. Its their right to choose. And they definitely want to." NoCookie version one has been downloaded over 300,000 times from our web servers in the past. NoCookie is a freeware product. You can find more information and download links at the company's web site. The Mac Observer Spin: We take some difference with the assertions surrounding the right to choose. If a site has cookies as their price of admission (meaning that having your cookies turned on is their requirement to enter the site), then the customer (in this case the web surfer) has a right to go elsewhere. They do not have the "right" to circumnavigate the price of admission (the requirements). Now, this does not cover whether or not cookies are a good thing in and of themselves, just the right of choice. When a company or individual makes a web site, and maintains that web site, we the browsers do not have some inalienable right to access that site. This is something that many of us sometimes forget. Still, there is room for abuse with cookies, and some sites go too far. Indeed, in some cases, the use of cookies is nothing more than a poorly implemented back engine where the programmers were too lazy to properly track such things as shopping carts. OnePointOh