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Re: lynx-dev cookie handling idea -- "max expire time"


From: brian j. pardy
Subject: Re: lynx-dev cookie handling idea -- "max expire time"
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 02:09:42 -0700

David Woolley wrote:
> > For example, if a cookie has no expire time set, or is set to some time
> > way in the future (and this option is set), re-set the expiration date to
> > (current time + max expire time).
> 
> If Lynx is persistently storing cookies with no expire time, it is broken.
> These are relatively benign cookies intended only for a single session
> (e.g. content of shopping cart, or in practice, the number of the cart).
> The cookie spec says that these expire at the end of the browsing session.

Ah, my mistake there. I didn't mean what I said. 

> Time limiting cookies used as an alternative to proper login procedures
> would just annoy the people who have been demanding persistent cookies.

Basically, the idea is that I receive a cookie with an expire time of,
say, the year 2012. Rather than just having it sit around on my drive
until I delete it by hand, this would be an option to say "I won't keep
any cookies for more than 6 months" or something similar.

> If all you are interested in is cookies used for "tracking" for market
> research and advertisement targetting, you will confuse the trackers more
> by rejecting all cookies or by not making them persistent.

Not a very bad thing IMO. :)

> I can't see any advantage in applying a ceiling.

The cookie file will get very large eventually, once persistent cookies
have been in use for a while. This may or may not lead to slow startups.

I'm also not sure what will happen when a user gets an amount of cookies
in the cookie file near the numerical limit (don't recall the limit
offhand, but it is in LYCookie.c) -- Lynx might delete some of them as it
does when getting new cookies interactively, or it might do something
else.

-- 
"You are in a maze of twisty turny man pages, all alike." -Charles Miller
I want the presidency so bad I can already taste the hors d'oeuvres.

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