Is there much of an anti-cookie movement anymore

I'm not sure whether this belongs on StackOverflow or on ServerFault, so I've picked SO for as first go.

A number of years ago, there was a highly visible discussion about mis-use of HTTP cookies, leading to various cookie filtering proxys and eventually to active cookie filtering in browsers like Firefox and Opera. Even now, Google will admit that currently about 7% of end-users will reject their tracking cookies, which is quite a lot, actually.

I still vett all cookies that get set in my browser. I have for years. I personally do not know anyone else who does this, but it has given me a few interesting insights into web tracking. For instance, there are many many more sites using Google Analytics than there were even two years ago. And there are still sites (extremely few, fortunately) which malfunction hideously if you don't let them set cookies. But advertisers in particular are still setting cookies to track your way across the web.

So is there much of an anti-cookie movement anymore? Has anyone tried to take Google to task for setting so many with Analytics? Is anyone trying to vilify sites like Ebay and PayPal who use a dodgy cross-site cookie to let you login?

Or am I making too much of a stupidly small problem?

Best Answer

I am also one of the hold-outs who doesn't automatically accept cookies. I do appreciate sites that need fewer, and I am more likely to return to those sites and allow cookies from them in the future.

That said, I do think that being vigilant about cookies is not (rationally) worth the effort. (In other words, I expect I will keep doing what I'm doing because it makes me feel better, even though I don't have evidence of commensurate tangible benefit.)

Related Solutions

Javascript – google analytics – multiple trackers on one page (cookie conflict)

Now made easy with the new asynchronous tracking code. :)

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/#MultipleCommands

Javascript – How to set/unset a cookie with jQuery

Update April 2019

jQuery isn't needed for cookie reading/manipulation, so don't use the original answer below.

Go to https://github.com/js-cookie/js-cookie instead, and use the library there that doesn't depend on jQuery.

Basic examples:

// Set a cookie
Cookies.set('name', 'value');

// Read the cookie
Cookies.get('name') => // => 'value'

See the docs on github for details.

Before April 2019 (old)

See the plugin:

https://github.com/carhartl/jquery-cookie

You can then do:

$.cookie("test", 1);

To delete:

$.removeCookie("test");

Additionally, to set a timeout of a certain number of days (10 here) on the cookie:

$.cookie("test", 1, { expires : 10 });

If the expires option is omitted, then the cookie becomes a session cookie and is deleted when the browser exits.

To cover all the options:

$.cookie("test", 1, {
   expires : 10,           // Expires in 10 days

   path    : '/',          // The value of the path attribute of the cookie
                           // (Default: path of page that created the cookie).

   domain  : 'jquery.com', // The value of the domain attribute of the cookie
                           // (Default: domain of page that created the cookie).

   secure  : true          // If set to true the secure attribute of the cookie
                           // will be set and the cookie transmission will
                           // require a secure protocol (defaults to false).
});

To read back the value of the cookie:

var cookieValue = $.cookie("test");

UPDATE (April 2015):

As stated in the comments below, the team that worked on the original plugin has removed the jQuery dependency in a new project (https://github.com/js-cookie/js-cookie) which has the same functionality and general syntax as the jQuery version. Apparently the original plugin isn't going anywhere though.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Javascript – google analytics – multiple trackers on one page (cookie conflict)

Javascript – How to set/unset a cookie with jQuery

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