

Cookie summary for minecraftforum.net - bartkappenburg
http://www.cookie-checker.com/check-cookies.php?url=minecraftforum.net

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paulsutter
This is the real cause of most cookie deletion. (EDIT: Many) browsers are
configured by default for ~1000 cookies, and all these ad networks and data
providers setting their own cookies quickly overrun that. It doesn't help that
google Analytics sets separate (first party) cookies for each website you
visit.

That 1000 cookie limit becomes a sort of FIFO, and that's why we always seem
to get logged out at weird times for no reason.

~~~
jevinskie
Do you have any evidence to point to this ~1000 cookie limit?

~~~
clone1018
This is a bit dated, but it makes sense that there is a set cookie limit:
<http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/16/browser-cookie-limits/>

~~~
morsch
It seems the current value for Firefox is 3000:
[http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/file/48502b61a63e/netw...](http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/file/48502b61a63e/netwerk/cookie/nsCookieService.cpp#l92)

~~~
ErikD
In Chrome it's 3300 [1]

[1]
[http://src.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src/net/cookies/cookie_...](http://src.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src/net/cookies/cookie_monster.cc)
search for kMaxCookies

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nobody_nowhere
I don't see 139 when I navigate the mincraftforum.net directly, but when you
have 8 ad units on a page, plus site analytics and a sharing toolbar or two
the 37 that I see is about what i'd expect.

One thing that could be happening to drive the number up in some cases is
identity synchronization between advertising providers. Vendors like BlueKai
share profile data about you (sites visited etc) by calling out to the domains
of other partners, who redirect back with an ID appended (or vice versa). This
ID match then enables out-of-band profile sync.

Best spot to do this is these sites who go for ad overkill.

~~~
gyardley
It's worth noting that the user ID sync only needs to happen once per bidder
in the real-time auction that determines which ads get served - once the
bidder's user ID is linked to the auction provider's user ID, no more cookies
need to get set.

A typical user who landed on this page as part of their normal everyday
browsing wouldn't have nearly so many cookies written - because this site is
being tested in isolation, it's a bit misleading.

This is probably why the parent here only saw 37 cookies, vs. the tester's
139.

~~~
bartkappenburg
The software acts like a first-time visitor with no set cookies and empty
cache. I agree on the fact that once you're logged in, made a bid or whatever,
the number of cookies written on each page load is substantially lower... :)

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driverdan
Why would anyone keep 3rd party cookies enabled? I have found only 2 or 3
sites that needed to be whitelisted. Everything else works just fine without
them.

~~~
arscan
What sites, out of curiosity? Obviously all the like-like (likesque) buttons
would no longer function, but I don't care about those. I was wondering what
valid use case there is for 3rd party cookies that actually benefits the user
and not the service provider.

~~~
henry_flower
stackexchange 'global' login on their sites requires 3rd party cookies.

~~~
aidenn0
The open-id login does not and works great for me.

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CWIZO
I've checked one of my pages and it's putting requests to my sub domain
(static.example...) under third party.

~~~
bartkappenburg
Technically that is a third party ;-) Help me out: should I filter those?

~~~
CWIZO
I think that you should. But I'm sure there are cases where this assumption
would be wrong: )

~~~
bartkappenburg
One case could be that an ad agency allows customers to direct a subdomain to
their servers (eg. ads.domain.com). A visitor doesn't know if the request is
'close' by or to some shady ad agency...

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rlx0x
They also include scripts from (at least) 9 different external domains,
similar the minecraftwiki and they monitor page activity. Every few seconds a
ping packet about browser information is sent to some random advertisement
corp. Nothing special if you just want to make the most money possible with a
community, that besides hosting, you have absolutely nothing to do with :(

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dustingetz
if it's helping notch make money, and its not degrading user experience, why
exactly is it mad...?

if lots of cookies is a viable technique, the browser vendors will increase
the cookie limit.

Then again, 640k of ram is enough for anyone.

~~~
xymostech
It's not a website owned or operated by notch, it's completely independent (or
at least, it was when it was created). I think it's mad because it probably
_is_ degrading user experience, just not in exceedingly noticeable ways (i.e.
sending 139 cookies for every request takes time, so each page load will take
more time).

~~~
wedtm
This is correct, Minecraftforum.net is not owned or operated by Mojang, that
is done by Curse.

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tomjen3
Yep, but most of them are third-party cookies. There is no good reason to use
them and plenty of bad reasons.

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instakill
I get an error for every single site I try.

~~~
thomaslutz
HN DDoS.

~~~
thejosh
I would love to see an analysis from someone who gets
HN'd/Slashdotted/Reddit'd often traffic stats. I know that the "frontpage" of
reddit would garner you hundreds of thousands of hits.

~~~
benologist
There are _heaps_ of blog posts on HN, digg, reddit, slashdot etc from overly
excited dudes who can't wait to show us what a one day spike then decline back
to nothing looks like in Google Analytics.

