Reply #4: Good post ...

[RoyGBiv]

That said, while I agree with this in general, I feel you downplay the part cookies can and do play in the gathering of information that individuals may not necessarily want gathered. Yes, cookies in and of themselves don't do anything, but they are commonly used to track people's surfing habits. And, while the information stored in a cookie may not reveal much all by itself, that same information can be used in other ways to reveal quite a lot. This is the reason it is a good idea to clean your cookies rather frequently and avoid allowing 3rd party websites to set cookies when you load a page.

Certainly a degree of paranoia about this that borders on the irrational has erupted, if for no other reason than the one you mention in your closing comments. Disabling cookies is easy. OTOH, the problem is that a lot of people don't.