# Lifestyles & Discussion > Privacy & Data Security >  Congressmen blast "supercookies" as Privacy Menace

## DamianTV

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...acy-menace.ars




> In a Monday letter to the Federal Trade Commission, two prominent members of the House of Representatives raised alarm about the use of "supercookies" by popular websites such as msn.com and hulu.com. Citing an August Wall Street Journal article, they urged the FTC to investigate the growing use of supercookies as a potential "unfair and deceptive act or practice."
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> Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) are co-chairs of the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus. In their letter to FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz, they wrote that "we believe the usage of supercookies takes away consumer control over their own personal information, presents a greater opportunity for misuse of personal information, and provides another way for consumers to be tracked online."
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> So what's a supercookie? Ars asked Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher who has assisted the Wall Street Journal with its privacy reporting. He told us that the term doesn't have a precise definition. Rather, it's "more of a marketing term" for cookie-like strategies for tracking users across browser sessions. Supercookies are typically difficult for users to delete, and Soltani said that's precisely why some less-scrupulous advertisers use them.
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> In July Soltani was part of a team that uncovered a tracking method using ETags that worked even when the user was in private browsing mode. One of the sites using the technology, Hulu, quickly dropped it and severed ties with KISSmetrics, the company that provided it. KISSmetrics, along with clients such as Spotify and AOL, are now embroiled in a lawsuit arguing that the technology violates privacy laws.
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> Soltani pointed to Evercookie, a research prototype that demonstrates just how powerful supercookies can be. It stores information about itself in up to a dozen places in the user's browser. And any time information stored in one place disappears (for example, when a user clears his cookies), it is "respawned" using information stored elsewhere. Such "zombie cookies" are extraordinarily difficult for ordinary users to delete.
> ...


I've beaten the Super Cookie, and it is no where near as easy as it sounds.  Well, there is an easy way and a hard way, but both have their own share of user privacy vs functionality.  If anyone is interested, post a reply and I'll explain how to do it.

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## jtstellar

what kinda info does it store and what is it used for

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## Brian4Liberty

> I've beaten the Super Cookie, and it is no where near as easy as it sounds.  Well, there is an easy way and a hard way, but both have their own share of user privacy vs functionality.  If anyone is interested, post a reply and I'll explain how to do it.


Ok, I'll bite. What do you do to eliminate super-cookies?

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## swiftfoxmark2

CCleaner will delete them, but that doesn't mean they won't be active until you run it.

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