After disabling the cookies on my laptop, I tried a few websites. Amazon and Yahoo! let me on with no problem. Facebook wouldn't even let me in without enabling cookies, as well as Blogger, I was surprised to find! I had to enable them to write this post.
I was semi-aware that cookies were tracking me, but I had no idea they were so necessary to progress online. I knew, from familiar advertisements from sites I had visited (and even items I had looked at) that cookies were tracking me.
My settings on my laptop were set to "Allow local data to be set (recommended)" regarding cookies, so I never had the sites ask permission before. I may very well do so in the future though.
Privacy and ethics on the web are haphazard at best. There are so many ways to collect your information online that it boggles the mind. This data collection could, in theory, be good, if you like seeing ads for things that strike your interest, but I think it's an invasion of privacy, and I think it stinks that we have no choice but to use cookies in order to access certain websites.
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