You know, ever since I dumped those other browsers for Mozilla, the question I constantly find myself asking when I visit a new site is, “Will I save your cookie?” Mozilla has a great cookie management system, and makes it really easy to make a one time decision whether or not to store cookies from a particular server or domain. Under no circumstances do I accept cookies thrust upon me by web statistics, hit counter, or ad broker servers. I do accept them from sites where I might buy something and will need to use the shopping cart. I do accept them from sites where I want to save my username and password for future visits.

What’s more interesting to me are the other cases. There are plenty of sites out there that offer cookies for no apparent reason. For example, every single Blogspot site tries to give me a cookie. I refuse them all. In fact, nearly every site I visit that’s “powered” by Microsoft wants me to take a cookie — I assume it’s because ASP programmers usually turn on session tracking whether they need it or not. I usually refuse their advances. Other than that, I accept or refuse based on nothing other than intrigue or trust. If a site seems to be run by somebody cool and/or clever, I’ll accept the cookie, thinking that I’ll be rewarded for it. If I think you’re giving me a cookie out of ignorance or malice, I refuse.

Anyway, I feel like everybody should have real cookie filtering enabled, if nothing else it forces you to think a little bit about who you’re willing to trust all the time.