Clear out all cookies (Firefox). Visit top page of target.com. 35(!) cookies added. Seems like a lot just to visit the top page.

Out of hand? Yes.

Why does the number of cookies mean anything to you?

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M A V I C
Why does the number of cookies mean anything to you?

35 pieces of tracking info from visiting a single site. Not the OP, but that's a lot.

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silvarios

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M A V I C
Why does the number of cookies mean anything to you?

35 pieces of tracking info from visiting a single site. Not the OP, but that's a lot.

Why is that a lot?

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M A V I C
Why is that a lot?

Because it's more than 1. Or 5. Or whatever. It's excessive. A site doesn't need 35 cookies to track a user who hasn't even logged in or added an item to their cart.

How many of those were deep tracking cookies that were restored by flash for visiting one of the customer sites and not actually placed by Target?

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The Grim Ninja

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M A V I C
Why is that a lot?

Because it's more than 1. Or 5. Or whatever. It's excessive. A site doesn't need 35 cookies to track a user who hasn't even logged in or added an item to their cart.

Still, why is that excessive? Sure it doesn't need 35 cookies to tell who is logged in or has an item in their cart, but the site is doing much more than that. I just checked one site I worked on, and it loads about 30 cookies. All of which have a useful purpose.

What would you prefer, it all be entered as the view state in the page code itself? That's how .NET sites tend to handle it - then you end up with sometimes as much as 1MB of code in the page that isn't cached - unlike cookies.

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M A V I C

Quote
The Grim Ninja

Quote
M A V I C
Why is that a lot?

Because it's more than 1. Or 5. Or whatever. It's excessive. A site doesn't need 35 cookies to track a user who hasn't even logged in or added an item to their cart.

Still, why is that excessive? Sure it doesn't need 35 cookies to tell who is logged in or has an item in their cart, but the site is doing much more than that. I just checked one site I worked on, and it loads about 30 cookies. All of which have a useful purpose.

What would you prefer, it all be entered as the view state in the page code itself? That's how .NET sites tend to handle it - then you end up with sometimes as much as 1MB of code in the page that isn't cached - unlike cookies.

That would be a little excessvie unless they have a mobile version of the site.

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Useful?
To whom?

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

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Eureka, CA

30 cookies is too many ONLY because people fear cookies and want fewer. When a politician tell his constituents that the higher taxes he's enacted are actually for their benefit, it never goes over well.

run adblock

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hal
30 cookies is too many ONLY because people fear cookies and want fewer. When a politician tell his constituents that the higher taxes he's enacted are actually for their benefit, it never goes over well.

You think that many cookies was meant for the user's benefit?

I don't know, but I also don't care. Cookies don't worry me. I use adblock and a tracker blocker

So, I don't work for Target, and their cookie names and values are obfuscated, so I can't speak for them. For a site I work on, I'll give a rough breakdown. This is what I can see from looking at the site, not any internal information.

SalesForce tracking - 1 cookie that is used to track users as they come to the site and associate them with resulting SalesForce profiles.
LinkedIn integration - 9 cookies that handle users being able to login with LinkedIn and I think a couple other LinkedIn integrations.
Facebook integration - 18 cookies that handle users being able to login with Facebook
B2B services - 7 cookies. I think these are cookies set by our CMS that runs the B2B marketing site.
Analytics - roughly 4 cookies for analytics
Marketing optimization tools - roughly 10 cookies. These aren't so much for tracking users, but enabling marketing to deliver content that is relevant to users. This includes things like delivering a mobile experience for those on mobile devices.
Advertising platform - 10 cookies. They're for a platform that helps manage our advertising.
Google APIs - 9 cookies that allow us to work with Google's APIs

When you're using third party service and not building every single thing yourself, it's real easy to end up with a lot of cookies.

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M A V I C
So, I don't work for Target, and their cookie names and values are obfuscated, so I can't speak for them. For a site I work on, I'll give a rough breakdown. This is what I can see from looking at the site, not any internal information.

SalesForce tracking - 1 cookie that is used to track users as they come to the site and associate them with resulting SalesForce profiles.
LinkedIn integration - 9 cookies that handle users being able to login with LinkedIn and I think a couple other LinkedIn integrations.
Facebook integration - 18 cookies that handle users being able to login with Facebook
B2B services - 7 cookies. I think these are cookies set by our CMS that runs the B2B marketing site.
Analytics - roughly 4 cookies for analytics
Marketing optimization tools - roughly 10 cookies. These aren't so much for tracking users, but enabling marketing to deliver content that is relevant to users. This includes things like delivering a mobile experience for those on mobile devices.
Advertising platform - 10 cookies. They're for a platform that helps manage our advertising.
Google APIs - 9 cookies that allow us to work with Google's APIs

When you're using third party service and not building every single thing yourself, it's real easy to end up with a lot of cookies.

What happens is that people open the privacy panel in their browser preferences, and they notice that there are literally thousands of cookies on their computer.

Most of these are from sites that you either don't login to, or only visit once, yet they leave a persistent cookie.

This is generally a WTF moment for most people.