Supercookie Monster Eating Your Privacy for Lunch
You already know that every word you type on your browser is being tracked and used to profile and deliver highly-relevant advertisements to you (Big Brother Lives in Your Browser). And you know that most websites install “cookies” onto your computer in order to store relevant information about you (account numbers) that make surfing more convenient, and to gather information that allows advertisers to know more about you. You probably even know how to delete them.
But new research has shown that deleting cookies doesn’t always help. A new breed of cookies, called supercookies, can reconstruct all of your profile history even after the cookie has been deleted. MSN.com and Hulu.com just got caught using supercookies to track your surfing habits in stealth mode (you have no way of knowing that it’s happening, and you can’t do anything about it). The Wall Street Journal had this to say about supercookies and history stealing:
