Cookies have gotten a bad rap. They are a little bit of Internet technology that has been associated in some strands of popular discussion with the darkest strains of Big Brother online. In fact, cookies do help some Internet companies track some information about users, but there have been significant limitations on what they could see.One interesting aspect of the plans by Phorm, a company building an advertising targeting system, is that it has found a way to make cookies do what so many feared they could: track every page you visit on the Internet.Phorm has deals to work with the three largest Internet service providers in Britain, and it is trying to establish similar arrangements in other countries including the United States. Because Phorm’s system can actually watch all the traffic to and from your computer, it can modify cookies in ways that haven’t been used before.The point of all this is to follow users around the Web without tapping into the I.S.P.’s database of user names and other personal information.Phorm’s All-Seeing Parasite Cookie - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog
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