About the Cookies

That's the banner from our site of course.

The issue is that the basic design of the Web has each page request independent of every other one. So, I ask a site for a page, it delivers it to me, and then it instantly forgets me. In between requests, there is no "session" or "connection" maintained. So, for example, sites can't tell that you have left them; they simply stop receiving page requests (because you've gone off to another site, or to make a cup of tea), and eventually assume that you have gone away.

Now, if you're thinking about tracking, you may consider that it's a good thing that the site does not remember you (although tracking what people actually do, as opposed to what we guessed they might, is how we analyse usage - in an anonymous way - and work out how to improve the site for everyone). If you're in a Web shop, you certainly do want the system to remember what's in your shopping basket as you move from page to page. And, in this Community, you do want the site (I assume) to remember that you are signed in, and who you are, so that it can identify you as the author when you type a new message.

There are several ways to allow a site to remember you for these reasons, but cookies are arguably the most flexible and the safest. We could put something on the end of every page URL, but that's rather public. And, of course, the other ways could potentially be used for tracking too.

That's how we've come to the situation that Cassandro describes, whereby many sites won't work usefully if you block all cookies. You can try (using browser facilities), but if we, and other site operators, gave you the ability to do it with a button, we'd probably get far more complaints about the things that stopped working than from what we have in California's screenshot, which is to identify the cookies that we need to make the basic stuff work, and let you stop the others.

Hope this helps as at least a perspective on the issues.

That's the banner from our site of course.

The issue is that the basic design of the Web has each page request independent of every other one. So, I ask a site for a page, it delivers it to me, and then it instantly forgets me. In between requests, there is no "session" or "connection" maintained. So, for example, sites can't tell that you have left them; they simply stop receiving page requests (because you've gone off to another site, or to make a cup of tea), and eventually assume that you have gone away.

Now, if you're thinking about tracking, you may consider that it's a good thing that the site does not remember you (although tracking what people actually do, as opposed to what we guessed they might, is how we analyse usage - in an anonymous way - and work out how to improve the site for everyone). If you're in a Web shop, you certainly do want the system to remember what's in your shopping basket as you move from page to page. And, in this Community, you do want the site (I assume) to remember that you are signed in, and who you are, so that it can identify you as the author when you type a new message.

There are several ways to allow a site to remember you for these reasons, but cookies are arguably the most flexible and the safest. We could put something on the end of every page URL, but that's rather public. And, of course, the other ways could potentially be used for tracking too.

That's how we've come to the situation that Cassandro describes, whereby many sites won't work usefully if you block all cookies. You can try (using browser facilities), but if we, and other site operators, gave you the ability to do it with a button, we'd probably get far more complaints about the things that stopped working than from what we have in California's screenshot, which is to identify the cookies that we need to make the basic stuff work, and let you stop the others.

Hope this helps as at least a perspective on the issues.