Patent ID: 7614002

Claim:
In a client computer connected to a remote site, a system comprising: a mechanism, embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, that receives a response from the remote site, the response including a request directed to a cookie operation and policy information, the policy information comprising a set of at least one valid token in association with the cookie operation; a browser component, embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, that handles the response, including recognizing the requested cookie operation; one or more computer-readable storage media embodying a cookie mechanism configured to locally perform operations on cookies based on a current privacy setting; and an evaluation engine, embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, the evaluation engine invoked to determine whether the cookie mechanism should perform the requested operation based on an evaluation of criteria available to the client computer including the policy information, the criteria comprising: a first valid token in the set of valid tokens in association with a first privacy result; and a second valid token in the set of valid tokens in association with a second privacy result; the evaluation engine further configured to: compare the first privacy result with the current privacy setting, set the current privacy setting to correspond to the first privacy result if the first privacy result provides more privacy than the current privacy setting, compare the second privacy result with the current privacy setting, and set the current privacy setting to correspond to the second privacy result if the second privacy result provides more privacy than the current privacy setting.