What are the ethical issues with fiddling around with browser cookies?
I recently downloaded a small piece of software that lets a person edit (and delete) their browser cookies. Among other things, it lets me view and delete them. Interestingly, it also lets me edit the cookies and then save the edited cookie.
—Many cookies have an expiration date – anywhere from one hour to 100 years in the future.
—Many cookies have some sort of identifying number for tracking purposes.
—Some cookies have an integer that shows the limit of free articles one can see before the pay wall goes up. (In the Atlanta newspaper’s case, you can see four at no charge.)
So ..
- in the first case, I have edited the expiration date to be tomorrow, not 100 years in the future.
- in the second case, I have edited the identifier to a different number (GUID sometimes) which is not me. My hope is that it will screw up the recordkeeping and track the wrong person, or at least not track me.
- in the third case, I changed the limit from 4 to 100 in order to read more articles before the paywall is invoked.
My rationalization, which is admittedly self-serving, is that they have no right to track me, and therefore I can mess with their cookies in any way I want.
[Of course I could clean out my cookies at any time, which is my right.]
But I enjoy messing with them. What are the ethical considerations here?
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7 Answers
Really none.
By developers, cookies are considered public data. No decent security would rely on them as they are stored on your computer. Anything important will be stored with the site instead and at most confirmed with the cookie. They’re basically a handy way to store non-critical information without needing an account.
A lot of people clear their cookies every time they exit a browser, so they should never really give or take much information or functionality on their own.
There may be some unintended consequences of messing with them, but again it should be limited.
Ethically, it’s the equivalent of telling telemarketer you don’t remember talking to them before. Not really the type of thing you’ll burn for ;)
Editing to add: you might be a little careful if you find something that’s actually of value that you can get free by editing cookies. The people behind it would be idiots, but some of the things that have been considered “hacking” in a legal sense are even less technically involved, and further against “best practices”.
I consider it no different from ad-blocking. The server is giving up data to your machine. I should be in control of how I want to view or manipulate that data. They can’t make me not take a piss during that pepsi commercial.
Cookies are files on your computer. Are you allowed to edit files on your computer?
Did you agree to any license for the cookies?
Did you agree to not modify the cookies?
As long as you don’t violate rule #1, you’re golden.
Rule #1. Don’t leave crumbs in the bedsheets.
Editing the cookie so you can read more articles than you are entitled to puts you on ethically shaky ground. OK so you haven’t achieved anything you couldn’t have done just by clearing the cache 25 times. (I suppose ethically using an adblocker so you don’t see the ads on a website is unethical too but then the vast quantities of ads some websites throw at you is unethical too.)
You can google the article and if you follow the link from google it will usually bypass the limit.
Google does not like paywalls and won’t index your shit if it is blocked so sites let google through.
Ads on websites are now the #1 vector for malware. To safely compute you now must use one.
Malware is definitely an issue but if the advertising industry was slightly more ethical it would be harder for people to use it for malware. Ads masquerading as hyperlinks in the content. Ads masquerading as download buttons (sourceforge for example) or next buttons on websites so you click on the ad instead of going to the page you want to. Websites with so many ads that they take an age to download. Websites that split an article into 50 pages with 1 picture per page so you see more ads.
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