Cookies - request for a bit of basic information

PM's new cookie banner has raised questions, and it sent me to the cookie policy pages. That made me realize that I have probably ignored cookies for too long. Among other things, I had not realized how many different types of cookies there were.

I do not want to disable "technical" cookies that are required for the fundamental operation of the site or for basic navigation within the site. On the other hand, I have no interest at all in cookies that are there to, I think the wording is, optimize my viewing experience. That silly phrase could of course mean anything and I could be misunderstanding it. Nor am I crazy about having information about me shared so that I can get messages about things that I am supposed to be interested in buying.

Qs:
[1] About all I seem to be able to do through my browser is deny all cookies, deny only 3rd party cookies, accept all cookies, or select all cookies from specifiable sites (PM, for example). Is there a way, using a common browser such as Firefox, to distinguish between "technical" and commercial cookies and accept those in the first group and deny the ones in the other?
[2] If I do nothing, am I likely to see any change, as a result of the new cookies banner, in my present and satisfactory "experience" in interacting with PM?

-Marty-

I accept cookies from the primary site and drop them all when the browser is closed. That means that I have to log in most times that I visit, but that seems more acceptable than allowing unlimited tracking.

If you use Windows you might want to download a copy of CleanUp! so you can be sure ALL the caches are cleared out after you log off. It is well known that many sites can read others' cookies and even when you clear them from your browser copies may exist in hidden caches. The cumulative effect of reading lots of cookies from diverse sights is that the reader will know more about you than you care for.

By the way, the PM site also appears to be doing browser fingerprinting. This can be EXTREMELY invasive and almost comparable to reading your computer's DNA.

I only accept cookies from the website. I have it to never for third party cookies. Using Firefox. I also have the browser set to dump everything when I close it. I,too have to login every time.

Cookies, scripts, ads from base domain only. No third party cookies, no third party ads, third party scripting almost never. I periodicly scrub cookies from the browser.

Scottl said:

......
By the way, the PM site also appears to be doing browser fingerprinting. This can be EXTREMELY invasive and almost comparable to reading your computer's DNA.

Click to expand...

I didn't know my computer had DNA. Does that mean if it's meets another in the middle of the night they can reproduce?

It is interesting to see how many get a tad paranoid when they find out this sort of stuff is going on inside that black box on the desk interconnected to a whole bunch of other black boxes located who knows where.

Now the real question.
Is your computer actually talking directly to the practical machinist server right now or is it talking to a black box in china which is just showing you the PM website while it probes your internals? (insert spooky music here)

I set my browser to delete all cookies and history on close just to keep traffic down and speeds things up although as stated above this certainly does not remove everything.
Often I will close my browser when going from one website to another. Particularly when paying bills, buying online or checking email.
In the old 300-1200 baud dialup days I would run a separate program on a "tap" machine dumping the raw net traffic and look for weird things but it's much to complicated to watch by eyeball now.

In general I just plain don't worry about cookies. If you don't want to be tracked or known there are tools.
The problem being many of the tools are built and handed out for free by not so reputable sources so you don't know what is inside of them.
Bob