Non-google sites send cookie requests through google search | Hacker News Reader

Non-google sites send cookie requests through google search

16.media.tumblr.com

1 pointsnewe4 comments

This isn't news. Google will add a link tag and prefetch directive to links that it's confident you'll click on. There's a greasemonkey script that will identify prefetched resources:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/38841

Bigger image:

http://inertcom.com/goog_cookie.png

No, they're not doing that, it's Firefox's pre-fetching that does that. It's fetching parts of the linked sites, and in doing so, the site is trying to set a cookie.

Google has nothing to do with this.

No, Google is directing your browser to prefetch the linked site by inserting

    <link rel="prefetch" href="http://example.com">

for links they think you'll visit.

http://tr.ashcan.org/2008/12/keeping-tabs-on-googles-confide...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_prefetching

Reply on news.ycombinator.com