"For so many adult webmasters, their referrer link codes are the basis of their livelihood."

When I first heard about cookies, I admit I was a little alarmed. I felt vulnerable when I learned that strangers were uploading little programs into my computer while I surfed what I thought were safe sites.

Cookies are yummy sweets that Mom keeps in a jar. Cookies are also bits of text that web servers send to your computer when you visit a site.

This little code stays on your hard drive for a certain amount of time. Sometimes a cookie will live for a day. Sometimes it will live for a year. Cookies are used by advertisers and sponsor affiliates to track visits to a certain site or banner.

For instance, an adult webmaster will be able to track surfers on their site through the use of cookie codes nested within hyper-link tags. As ominous as it may sound to have someone from the outside track your Internet activity, cookies are not keystroke monitoring software/hardware like Carnivore.

Cookies don't record your chat sessions or log your email exchanges. Cookies collect simple clinical information like: what site you came from, what part of the world you are in and whether or not you've been to a particular page before. This information is vitally important to Internet advertisers, sponsors and affiliate webmasters.

Due to distress over privacy issues and Identity theft, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has begun to adopt a new security standard for the Internet. This standard is known as Platform for Privacy Preferences Project or P3P. What P3P does for the surfer is inform them of a website's privacy practices before it's allowed to be downloaded to their browsers.

In short, a page that isn't P3P compliant can be filtered out by a surfer's browser security settings. The main victim of the P3P standard is the THIRD-PARTY COOKIE used by large Internet advertisers like Double Click and many adult affiliate sponsors. If a surfer has their security settings configured to shut out third-party cookies, an affiliate webmaster could possibly lose a sale.

At this time, the majority of Internet surfers in the world use Microsoft Internet Explorer as their browser program. The newest version of this software IE6 filters out third-party cookies as a DEFAULT SETTING. The average Internet surfer rarely adjusts the security settings on their computer. So if they install IE6 or have it already loaded on their new computer, they will more than likely not receive a third-party cookie. Since third-party cookies are one of the most commonly used methods to track sales for the adult affiliate, a lot of adult webmasters are going to be pretty unhappy about this default IE setting.

P3P standards are touted by some and laughed at by others. Detractors of the standard claim P3P doesn't protect anyone from super cookies, web bugs and other tracking procedures. Nevertheless, the world's most popular browser refuses third-party cookies by default and whether or not the P3P standard is truly effective makes no difference to an adult webmaster trying to sell a sponsor.

To help you understand P3P and ways to make a site compliant to the standard, here are some helpful links:

W3C P3P page
(http://www.w3.org/P3P)
Straight from the source, this page explains P3P and posts links to information and developer resources.

P3P Edit
(http://p3pedit.com)
P3P is actually pretty easy to implement on a web site. This is one of many P3P policy editors you can use to bring your site up to speed. This editor is extra nifty because it's inexpensive and works online.

P3P Privacy Primer
(http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/excerpt/p3p/p3p.html)
This page from O'Reilly Network gives an even more detailed explanation of P3P and IE6.

For so many adult webmasters, their referrer link codes are the basis of their livelihood. It would be nice if they had the power to challenge the legitimacy of IE6 default settings in the courts.

Unfortunately, we in the porn business have enough trouble proving ourselves as a legitimate industry period. What an adult webmaster can do is ask their sponsors to become P3P compliant. There are other ways of tracking referral IDs other than third-party cookies. Ask your sponsors about their P3P policies. You may not be able to force big, bad Microsoft to change, but you do have the power to make sure your sponsors track your sales all the way to the bank.