But that's not necessarily the end of the story. As the Web grows, so grows the lure of database swapping, or rental. The unsettling thought is the real idea that all that personal information generated by the most popular Web sites could someday be housed in huge databases. In other words, in vast storehouses whose contents could be available to, well, you know, any and all who have the key. Call this the milk into which one could dunk a cookie.
Cookies are the wild card in Web privacy concerns.
When you first log on, a cookie only knows that you have arrived. But once there, you're fair game. If you buy something, that too is recorded and dropped into your pocket. The clerk in our example is tagging your sojourns, just as a cookie does when it makes note that you have clicked on a page or an ad. Cookies, in responsible hands, are treats.