Bev Godwin, director of online resources and interagency development for the White House new media team, asked the public on Friday to weigh in on the decade-old federal policy that does not allow agencies to use persistent cookies on their Web sites. The reason has to do with privacy, but it makes it harder for agencies to create Web services like those in the private sector. The White House wants the public to tell them what they think.
COMMENTS
Be informed that I am now using Firefox as my browser, with settings to delete all cookies, including super cookies, as soon as I exit any browser session.
I get this support thru the Better Privacy add-on to Fire Fox.
So far I have not yet found a site that has denied me access because I had deleted cookies from last time I visited.
Some Gov web sites do use some features that I believe are asking for security trouble down the road, such as Flash (controlled by a private enterprise that could get hacked) ... I am constantly deciding not to look at some info, because the webmaster has taken security risk choices, that I do not want to share, because I have no idea about the cyber security of the plugins needed to view the data.
I find out about these risk with the No Script add on to Fire Fox.
It is like when we get phone spam, trying to sell us some product or service, where we have not researched the outfit involved. They want us to buy NOW, and invariably I decline, because most times when I have gone along with the pitch, I end up regretting it later.
When a web site asks us to install this or that, to access whatever, it is not so easy to ask "what the heck is this, and why do we need it?" much easier to say "forget about that information."
Al Macintyre 07/25/09 04:13 pm ET