Mike McCarty wrote: > In order to use the ones I investigated, one must permit placement > of third-party permanent cookies. Doesn't seem to be true with Google. On the other hand, Google ads get on enough web-pages that a Google cookie can track you pretty well anyway. > Any time any website wants to retrieve those cookies, it can. Not strictly true -- only the "third party" can retrieve the cookies, and then only if the website puts a monitoring image from the third party on a page you're looking at. Even then, privacy-oriented proxies might deny access to the "third party". (But it's sensible to assume that the third party and the website are in collusion). I presume that you occasionally go through your cookie list and block the sites you don't recognise? I wrote: > I use my Gmail account for Fedora lists -- it's no secret that I'm on > this list! Mike asked: > Explain how to use it without exposing my machine to cookie placement > which can be used by third parties, and I'll reconsider. 1. Get a Gmail account. (Maybe use a different browser to sign up). 2. Set it so you can download all e-mail using POP3, and send using SMTP. 3. Clear all the cookies from the browser, and use a real mail client to send and receive in the future. I use Fetchmail so that list e-mail comes into Mutt as normal, and don't normally send through Gmail. Hope this helps, James. -- E-mail: james@ | I suppose if one has to go mad, slowly is the way to go. aprilcottage.co.uk | You wouldn't want to rush going mad, you might miss some | of the good bits. | -- Paul Tomblin