USATODAY.com - When cookies aren't monsters and spyware isn't spyware
Anonymous Patron writes "Andrew Kantor's Column at the USAToday this week takes a good look at Cookies and Spyware. Spyware, at least for the moment, can be clearly defined: It's malicious software put onto a computer without the user's knowledge and consent. Once there, it tracks some aspect of her usage and reports it to someone else. A cookie is a small piece of information a Web site puts on your computer. It's just a string of characters that identifies you to the site, something like an account number. There's no personal information in it; it's just an identifier.
He says don't confuse the 2."