UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#1

Post by adrow » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 9:08 AM UTC

UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit
ico.org.uk

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#2

Post by graystevens » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:28 AM UTC

This article alone places 9 on my system, plus a small lorry loads worth from .youtube.com due to the embedded video.

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#3

Post by creshal » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:32 AM UTC

graystevens wrote: post #2

This article alone places 9 on my system, plus a small lorry loads worth from .youtube.com due to the embedded video.

Good thing we get header compression with HTTP/2, isn't it? /s

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#4

Post by bartkappenburg » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:42 AM UTC

Self plug: we've developed cookie-checker.com. A way to check which cookies are placed with first time visitor.

ico.org.uk places 3 cookies (1 session, 2 other valid up to today and 2017): http://www.cookie-checker.com/check-cookies.php?url=ico.org....

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#5

Post by heeen » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:42 AM UTC

you can keep a whitelist of allowed permament/session/temporary cookies with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cslite-mod/

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#6

Post by troels » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:45 AM UTC

It seems a bit disingenuous to present numbers like that. For the lay person, it may sound scary that there as 44 cookies on a given page, but that's a completely arbitrary measure. I would think that the important thing isn't the number of cookies, but rather what which entities they are shared with and to some extend the information attached to them. First party cookie for example are not a privacy issue at all.

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#7

Post by Tepix » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:50 AM UTC

First thing you should do when setting up a new browser is blocking third party cookies - unless you're using Safari which blocks them by default.

The number of sites that don't work with 3rd party cookies is very small - whenever I run into one I usually use an alternative site or complain.

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#8

Post by omh » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:50 AM UTC

bartkappenburg wrote: post #4

Self plug: we've developed cookie-checker.com. A way to check which cookies are placed with first time visitor. ico.org.uk places 3 cookies (1 session, 2 other valid up to today and 2017): http://www.cookie-checker.com/check-cookies.php?url=ico.org....

When I visit the ICO site I also get a "civicCookieControl" cookie which you don't list. I guess that this is probably coming from javascript and your site isn't processing this?

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#9

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:53 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit

#10

Post by bartkappenburg » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 10:53 AM UTC

omh wrote: post #8

bartkappenburg wrote: post #4

Self plug: we've developed cookie-checker.com. A way to check which cookies are placed with first time visitor. ico.org.uk places 3 cookies (1 session, 2 other valid up to today and 2017): http://www.cookie-checker.com/check-cookies.php?url=ico.org....

When I visit the ICO site I also get a "civicCookieControl" cookie which you don't list. I guess that this is probably coming from javascript and your site isn't processing this?

It's running a headless browser with JS enabled so it should be there... not sure why it doesn't pick it up. Thanks for the mention :-)