The interactive nature of the World Wide Web has proved to be a powerful marketing tool, allowing businesses and consumers to communicate on a one-to-one basis. A cookie file (also know simply as a “cookie”) is a tool used on the web to facilitate and interpret this one-to-one interaction. Cookie files offer businesses the potential for more effective direct marketing of goods, services and information. For many e-businesses that operate over the Internet, cookie files are considered to be vital to the future success of on-line advertising and thus the generation of future business.
A cookie file is a small file that is stored on an individual's computer. The cookie file allows a website to tag the browser of the individual's computer with a unique identification. When the individual visits the website, a server at the website requests a unique identifier from the browser of the individual's computer. If the unique identifier is not received, the server delivers one, in the form of a cookie file, to the individual's computer, where it is stored for future access by that particular server.
Many cookie files used by on-line business actually benefit on-line computer users, such as by providing easy access to a website that an on-line computer user desires to interface with on a regular basis. Cookie files may be used by advertisers to avoid repeatedly showing the same advertisement (e.g., a banner) to the same on-line computer user. Additionally, cookie files make it easy for consumers to shop on their favorite websites. Once a consumer returns to a previously visited website where he or she purchased one or more items, the consumer can conveniently purchase additional items without having to re-enter his or her credit card number or shipping address, assuming that the consumer is using the same computer and a cookie file was stored in it during the consumer's first visit.
Cookie files are also used to track information about an on-line computer user's behavior. It is believed by many that cookie files invade a computer user's privacy because they reveal the user's identity and link it to the user's history of Internet usage. Thus, a cookie file may be used as a tool of surveillance by monitoring the computer user's browser and revealing website addresses that the computer user visits to the entity that “planted” the cookie file. Additionally, businesses that receive information obtained from using cookie files may share such information with other businesses. Thus a privacy issue may arise due to companies that abuse the technology of using cookie files. When linked to tracking databases, the storage of cookie files may reveal a particular person's most private information, such as their medical or financial history. Some companies further extend the privacy threat by cross-referencing cookie file identifiers with massive off-line marketing databases.
Several software programs have been developed and are on the market for the purpose of screening cookie files. Internet Explorer and Netscape allow a computer user to set the computer's browser such that all received cookie files are either automatically accepted (enabled) or rejected (disabled). In another user selectable browser mode, the computer user is prompted for a decision every time an individual cookie file is received.
There are software programs that let users create a profile of which types of cookie files they will accept. However, there is no guarantee that cookie files generated by companies with a history of abusing the use of cookie files will be screened out, nor is there a universal reference source for determining which cookie file sources should not be accepted. What is needed is a professional service that constantly researches and evaluates cookie file sources (e.g., websites), cookie files, consumer complaints and other statistical data, and develops and electronically distributes to subscribing computer users, on a periodic basis, a list of those cookie file sources that the service recommends should not be permitted to store cookie files in the subscribing user's computer. What is also needed is a user-friendly interface for enabling a user to easily and automatically modify the distributed list once it is received by the user's computer, such that the user may customize the list to meet his or her individual or organizational requirements.