Nearly 40 percent of Internet users delete cookies monthly

It may not be your merchant not honoring return days

[hannamyluv]

Based on a survey of 2,337 U.S. respondents, the study finds that 17 percent of Internet users delete cookies on a weekly basis. Approximately 12 percent do so on a monthly basis, and 10 percent make it a daily habit.

[clickz.com...]

[gmac17]

Fat Chance, those stats are way, way off.

Seth Godin had a great post about this crap data, saying that there is no way the same people who have made "yahoo" one of the top search terms are also sophisticated enough to delete their cookies....

[Metaphorically]

LOL! While I agree that surfers as a whole don't exhibit a high degree of sophistication, I can see how cookies could disappear. Many people, whether they get a busy signal on their dial-up or have ie crash on them daily, are told to delete temporary internet files and clear their cookies as a first step in troubleshooting. They get the impression that deleting cookies is part of keeping their computer working well. Like cleaning the gunk out of the top of the ketchup bottle.

Tracking cookies are also shown in the results of popular spyware scanners. This would definitely tell people that cookies are undesireable. I wouldn't be surprised if some tools are set up to delete them automatically every week or so. The plain fact is that a cookie does track user behaviour. That's not necessarily bad, but it is the user's perogative if they want to thwart my attempts at making money off them.

[shorebreak]

Outside of very technical niches, the average % of cookie deletion/shrinkage is more like 5%, IMO.

[AffiliateDreamer]

Just thinking of the top of my head here, but since most people use the internet (at home/work) to surf for adult related content, they probably want to 'delete' their tracks.

[cmatcme]

They only interviewed

2,337 U.S. respondents

That's not very many people, there are more people in our village.
Who knows that they weren't selected?

[skibum]

Must have been 2,337 privacy advocates, the rest were concerned but didn't know how to delete cookies.

[mfishy]

I find that stat nearly impossible to believe. If you asked 10 random web users if they knew how to delete cookies, at leat 9 would say no.

[hannamyluv]

Ahh, but all of you seem to forget the growing number of users who are using spy/adware removers. Many, many of those programs view tracking cookies as spy/adware components and remove them.

And clearing the cache is #2 on a tech support's list of things to do (following a reboot). People can learn quick to reboot and clear cache when the internet is not working.

That being said, 40% does seem a bit high.