Netscape 3, under Options/Network/Protocols allows an alert to be shown if a remote server has asked to write into your "cookie" file. I encountered such a request from e.g. http://structbio.nature.com/1996-April/thesolutionstructureofhivnefre Of course, you can inspect your cookie file to see what it wrote there (if you can make sense of it), and only the originating server can subsequently make use of this information. I still find it interesting to know exactly what information is being saved in this file, and what use the remote service makes of it. Some of it is clearly useful (ie version number of the browser you use etc), some of it may prove useful in your browsing of the site (ie you have visited the config page, and there is no reason to go there again) and some may relate to e.g. the user has viewed this article 3 times previously, so let us act upon this information. I suppose its a bit like the "club" cards in supermarkets, where the supermarket knows more about your weekly shopping habits than you do (I suspect for example that supermarkets must have a pretty good idea of the level of alcoholism in the country. Should your local supermarket alert your doctor if it concludes you are over-doing it for example?) I strongly suspect that the use of "persistent client states" as they are known, is likely to increase dramatically. Perhaps many of us will not mind if the remote server is keeping a "stateful" record of our browsing. But how would visitors from the commercial side of things view this? Is it part of the "e-world", or should we be concerned. i am keeping an open mind on this at the moment! Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ (Eudora Pro 3.0) ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)