Despite Others' Claims, Tracking Cookies Fit My Spyware Definition
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Suppose you bought a TV set that included a component to track what you watched, and then reported that data back to a company that used or sold it for advertising purposes. Only nobody told you the tracking technology was there or asked your permission to use it.
You would likely be outraged at this violation of privacy. Yet that kind of Big Brother intrusion goes on every day on the Internet, affecting millions of people. Many Web sites, even from respectable companies, place a secret computer file called a "tracking cookie" on your hard disk. This file records where you go on the Web on behalf of Internet advertising companies that later use the information for their own business purposes. In almost all cases, the user isn't notified of the download of the tracking cookie, let alone asked for permission to install it.
Luckily, the leading Windows antispyware programs can detect and remove these tracking cookies. It is the best defense a user has against this tactic.
Now, though, some of the companies that place these files on your hard disk are complaining about that defense. Some are urging the antispyware software companies to stop detecting and removing tracking cookies. They assert that the secret placement of these tracking mechanisms is a legitimate business practice, and that tracking cookies aren't really spyware or aren't harmful.
Unfortunately for consumers, this twisted reasoning is having some impact. In the most notable case, Microsoft disabled the detection and removal of tracking cookies when it purchased an antispyware program from a small company called Giant and turned it into Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware. That is a big reason why I can't recommend the Microsoft product, which still is in the test phase but is available for anyone to download.