This week, Firefox is in the news after developers of the browser announced that the next version will automatically block third-party cookies. Advertisers have fired back, saying that the cookies are harmless and that ad revenues are essential to the growth and development of the web.
Are the advertisers right? Do they have a point?
Sources
Sengupta, Somini. “In the Tracking Wars, It’s Browser Makers vs. Advertisers.” New York Times. New York Times, 25 Feb. 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2013..
Cookies are essential to the growth of ad revenues especially if the ad revenue model for a site is a cost-per-click or cost-per-view. However, the statement that cookies are harmless I believe is false. Cookies will not be able to harm your computer/phone/tablet since it is not in the category of a virus/Trojan/Malware, etc…BUT a cookie is meant to store information, and in this case it can be any information (ex: login credentials) supplied from the user initially and then supplied back to the server so you will never know how the owners of that third-party cookie will use your information. The real concern here is privacy, but then again every time we use our credit card, sellers have our information, and so do the banks, government, etc…There is a plus and minus to everything, and technology is no different.
I believe that advertisers make a great point in this case because if their main source of advertisements are by using default browsers and spreading cookies to create a revenue then they should be given the right to do so in an orderly fashion. However in this case, the advertisers companies are not being masked from the whole entire web database its just from Firefox’s browsers. Although, this may be more of an advantage to Firefox because people would download it knowing that third party advertisements will not be a problem on there.