On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:02:14 PDT, Leo Vegoda said:
Do German web sites not track users with cookies, then?
There's a subtle but significant difference between what cookies give you, which is "This is the same entity that visited our page at 7:48PM last Tuesday", and what easily trackable IP addresses give you, which is "This is an entity located at 1948 Durhof Street". Yes, it's often possible to to map between one and the other - but anonymous and pseudonymous are two different things. It's quite reasonable for somebody to want to be one but not the other - though it can be difficult in practice. It's even quite reasonable for somebody to wish to be positively identified, but their location not easily determined - for instance, I'm posting this as myself, but I may wish where I'm posting *from* to remain a secret (for instance, if my location reveals I'm not at home and thus burgling my residence is more feasible).