From: 	 heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com
Sent: 	 Friday, October 17, 1997 11:49 PM
To: 	 Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup
Subject: AOL / Big Brother and Cookies

 

From:          "Christian Word Ministries" 
To:            heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject:       Validity of article

Dear Mr. Hannaford

I would like to confirm that this article is true.  Please write us 
back to confirm the validity of this article.  We are a Christian 
News source and would like to get verification somehow so that if it 
is true we can let our readers know the truth.

Thanks 

Christian Word Ministries

***********************************************************************

From: crispen@INTERNIC.NET
To:      heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject:   AOL and Cookies


AOL UBER-COOKIES
----------------

Time to squish another urban legend!  :)

Many of you may have recently received an anonymous e-mail letter from
a disgruntled former America Online (AOL) employee warning you that
AOL 4.0 (code name "Casablanca") contains an "uber-cookie" that is

     far more treacherous than the simple internet cookie.  How would
     you like somebody looking at your entire hard drive,  snooping
     through any (yes, any) piece of information on your hard drive.
     It could also read your password and log in information and store
     it deep in the program code.

The letter goes on to say in breathless prose that

     anytime you are signed on to AOL, any top aol executive, any aol
     worker, who has been sworn to secrecy regarding this feature, can
     go into your hard drive and retrieve any piece of information
     that they so desire.  Billing, download records, e-mail,
     directories, personal documents, programs, financial information,
     scanned images, etc ...

GASP!  The story, of course, is a complete and utter hoax.  Big shock
there.  You can read the whole story about the hoax at CNET's news.com
at

     http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,15119,00.html?latest

or at ZDNet at

     http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1007/151567.html

As Bob Rankin wrote in his 29 July 1997 TOURBUS post titled "A Closer
Look at Cookies" (one of the best cookie articles I have ever read, by
the way)

     It's important to remember that a cookie cannot store any
     personal data such as your name, e-mail address or phone number
     unless you enter that information on a form at the site creating
     the cookie.  The safety features built into the cookies
     technology does not allow a website operator to rifle through the
     files on your hard disk, or to look at cookies that were created
     by other sites.

Remember, folks, cookie files -- even UBER-cookie files (am I am still
laughing at that word) -- are simple ASCII text files.  ASCII text
files are like pieces of paper.  Just as a piece of paper sitting on
your desk cannot sprout arms and legs and beat up your office's
stapler, an ASCII text file (like a cookie) can't "come to life" and
do _anything_ to your computer.  Both ASCII text files and pieces of
paper are inanimate objects that simply sit around, doing nothing more
than containing the information that has been put in/on them.  Period.

By the way, special thanks goes to TOURBUS rider Rich Tatum for
pointing me to ZDNet's article (I tend to get most of my tech news
from news.com and Good Morning Silicon Valley).  :)


=====================================================================

            .~~~.  ))
  (\__/)  .'     )  ))          Patrick Douglas Crispen
  /o o  \/     .~        Network Solutions Inc. / The InterNIC
 {o_,    \    {          Business E-mail: crispen@internic.net
   / ,  , )    \        Personal E-mail: crispen@brigadoon.com
   `~  '-' \    } ))      http://www.brigadoon.com/~crispen/
  _(    (   )_.'
 '---..{____}                    Warning: squirrels.

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