Let's look at two of the more blatant ones, picked randomly from this past week. The NY Times business section on Monday ran an ad from CyberMedia, software makers of GuardDog, among others.
Some cookies are harmless.
But others actually track your Internet browsing habits. Notwithstanding the image of cookie crumbs being ground to bits by the drive motors, this is pure crap. There are so many errors of fact here that it is hard to know where to begin. But let me try. Far from being secret, cookies are readily readable to anyone who can take the time to bring them up in a text editor.