« OneCare 2.0 Sounds Like a Recipe for Zombies | Main | If You Can Spell, You're Probably Safe from Phishing »
July 16, 2007
Updated: New Two-Year Google Cookies No Longer Tracking The Unix Clock Apocalypse
Google's shortening its cookie life expectancy.
Previously, Google cookies, which store user preferences, were set to last until the Unix calendar apocalypse, 2038. While it was always comforting to me to know that if I made it to 70, my Google cookie would survive with me, it made some people irritable. (Warning: Link contains gratuitous mention of goose-stepping and a picture of a chimpanzee)
The new policy sets the expiration date for Google cookies to two years from the user's last activity. If you put down your keyboard right now, walk away, and visit none of Google's properties until July 17, 2009, your cookie will die. On July 18, 2009 you'll be forced to tell Google you want 100 results per page -- and that those results better include adult content and not that watered down "SafeSearch" business -- all over again. Visit in the meantime, and the cookie will renew.
I don't understand the perceived privacy value of the new two year span.
As Google representatives have noted in the past, setting the expiration date to 2038 was just shorthand for "a very long time from now." "Two years from now" is decidedly less time than "31 years from now," but for a repeat Google user the cookie life span is still, effectively, perpetual. And two years is an awfully long time if we're talking about the perceived threat of inadvertent self-incrimination via the connection of a cookie to search logs. It seems that most people who just happen to use Google are no more "secure" than they were already, and that people who don't like having a unique identification tied to search logs at all will have the same beef they always have.
As Jim Harper noted on his blog this morning, the real "winners" are one-time or very infrequent Google users, who will eventually slide down the cookie memory hole. But they'll do that at no faster rate than the logs on their searches are set to be anonymized under Google's new anonymization policy, anyhow.
Maybe the real intent was just to defuse the "Google's cookie will last until 2038!" talking point. Not that anyone who's convinced Google is an NSA pawn will care.
Update: The Register calls the policy change "practically meaningless," and suggests that "most people who don't return to Google after two years are either dead or confined to maximum security prison - most likely dead." Either way, the dreaded NSA sneak-and-peekers already have them or can't get at them any longer.
Posted by mhall at 3:49 PM | Add Comment
Leave a comment