Surreptitious Installation of Browser Cookies is a Violation of Privacy

Readers who regularly peruse the Internet to read a broad variety of websites can be forgiven for maligning a very common pop-up feature that appears on many mainstream sites whenever they are first opened up. These pop-up features pertain to what are officially called HTTP cookies, and their importance in allowing well-meaning websites to function for the consumer should ultimately not be downplayed. They essentially amount to small packets of data that the website itself saves on the user's system; these are the only way any website with a shopping cart feature can retain items selected by the user even as the user moves between URLs within its domain. It is also commonly employed by websites with login functionality to remember what the user has previously entered into certain form fields so that users who regularly go onto the site do not have to type out the same information every time they log in.

Of course, any instance of a website installing a cookie onto a viewer's computer can be seen as an intrusion of not only the user's privacy but also their security. While there are many standards and systems in place that would prevent the user from being exposed to what their own browser would be able to tell is a potentially malicious packet of code, secretly installing cookies unbidden would still not reflect well on any website. Mainstream websites that depend on deploying cookies therefore ask for the user's trust by having newly arrived users choose whether to allow them to save cookies for the sake of the site's performance.

If a less scrupulous website does attempt to install cookies without the user's consent, it most likely would do so secretly. It would draw both a lot of negative attention and some ridicule if a website posts a classic pop-up banner that essentially forces the user to allow cookies in order to make the banner go away for them. A comically blatant form of this manipulation would be to have the "decline" button dynamically move away from the user's mouse cursor to prevent it from being reached. For more information click here https://v.redd.it/j8jn0j97sv871.