Obviously Cookiepedia is a "work in process" brought about by the EU's recent regulatory changes regarding cookies and how the data collected by cookies can be used. At this point Cookiepedia is dependent on the cookie developers to define how data collected by cookies will be used and reported to the public at large. Be that as it may, both the EU regulation and Cookiepedia are a step in the right direction.

This thread prompted me to learn more about cookies in general and "tracking cookies" in particular. That in turn resulted in some serious rethinking of my assumptions. Even a cursory look into the subject reveals that not all "tracking cookies" are bad and in fact many are beneficial to the user. The __cfduid being a case in point. Another example is FineTunedMac, which uses ubbt_hash which is a special code that validates and logs you into the site and ubbt_myid that identifies your user name. Technically both are tracking cookies and are so identified by both Cookie and Cookie Stumbler. (You can disable these cookies by UNchecking the Remember Me box when you log in). Personally I find them a great convenience and have no intention of disabling them.

IMHO Cookie management apps need to become a lot smarter. My ideal would include a system for categorizing cookies including such things as...
  • what information they send
  • what is done with the information — which may be site specific
  • is the information encrypted in transit or plain text
  • etc.
Then the informed user would have the information necessary to make intelligent decisions and the uninformed user could simply select what level of risk they find acceptable.

The trick in all of this is obtaining and maintaining the database used by the app and would imply a database subscription. Cookie Stumbler already uses a database approach and there is an annual subscription to keep it current but what is lacking is the categorization and fine tuning of the level of trust. Perhaps the EU's efforts to regulate cookies and their use of data will make it far easier to obtain the data from the publishers of tracking cookies and make it possible for my idealized app to be developed. Windows users have paid for antivirus signature database subscription for years. It seems to me tracking cookies might present an equally serious threat to privacy and security.

PERSONAL CHOICE
The identification of tracking cookies used in Cookie is such a blunt instrument that I have chosen to disable it in favor of Cookie Stumbler's approach. Then end results may not be noticeably different, but it appears more precise to me.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein