CYBERSPACE – Online content providers that rely too heavily upon downloadable cookies may well want to consider their options, if a trend among computer users and anti-spyware programs continues.Given the infestation of spy programs endured by those who access the internet via broadband, the popularity of anti-spyware software has increased. Unfortunately, this spells inconvenience not only for those who would access computers with ill intent, but also those legitimate businesses that use tracking cookies in order to gain visitor information useful in the development or support of their product or service. Since anti-spyware exists with the ability to remove unwanted cookies, those who depend upon them are finding themselves with fewer ways to know who has visited their sites or what they did while there.

Although many end users may not realize it, online marketers and publishers are not the only ones who may be inconvenienced. Established and legitimate companies use cookies to count visitors, often anonymously, and the tracking devices can also be installed in order to do things as useful as remember usernames and passwords, or limit pop-up ads via “frequency caps.”

Unfortunately, when DoubleClick proposed using them in 1991 in order to both identify and analyze the purchasing habits of surfers online and offline in order to better target advertising, users became deeply suspicious. Privacy advocates opposed the proposal so vigorously that the idea was ultimately withdrawn before implementation, but the experience made marketers, publishes, and consumers far more apprehensive about the technology. Today, Jupiter Research reports that as many as 40-percent of survey subject report stopping cookies before they can do their work. The majority of these cookies are submitted by third-parties other than the company operating the visited website.

Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, has strong opinions on the matter. “I don’t think cookies should be out there at all.” Rotenberg takes comfort in the fact that surfers are becoming increasingly savvier about how to allow cookies and when to block them.

No one knows for sure how serious a threat deleted tracking cookies may be to companies hoping to know how effective their online advertising is. Some aren’t even certain that they will notice a difference, pointing out that advertisers have not yet complained, online sales and subscriptions do not yet seem to have been affected, and statistical information is still drawn from what users report having done, not what they actually have done.