I’ve long been one of those people who told everyone not to turn off cookies in their browser because they can’t really be used for nefarious reasons. Well, DoubleClick has proven me wrong. The sleazeballs at the Internet’s largest advertising network are doing their best to tie your surfing practices to your real name and address. I know that a lot of poeple have a “so what” attitude toward this sort of thing, but I firmly believe that as customers we don’t have to stand for it. The proper response to this, if it offends you, is not to hack your browser so that you don’t accept DoubleClick cookies, but to stop visiting Web sites on the DoubleClick network. There are 11,000 of them, but hey, there are lots of other good sites out there too. If you’re feeling really proactive, send feedback to those sites letting them know why you’ll no longer visit. Cookies are a very useful tool. Allowing advertising networks to subvert them so that the best thing to do is turn them off is unacceptable.