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cookies

How do sites like quora track users without cookies?

If you clear your cookies and go to quora.com, suddenly you are logged in to quora. How does quora do that?

You can try that yourself. Does site now can check if a visitor is logged in to facebook and act appropiately?

Solution

  • The Quora home page actually has multiple cookie variables. Please analyze the scripting code below:

    QUORA HOMEPAGE SCRIPT ANALYSIS

    You will find that there are actually three object classes within the initial script load that will check whether you are logged into Quora or a partner site of Quora's which you have indicated that you will allow the associated login as your proxy login for Quora.

    Quora Login Check

    Quora also maintains session data via an internal Session_Table which will keep you "logged-in" to the Quora system unless you specifically "log-out".

    Quora Session Management

    The detail logs the IP Address along with Geography, as well as specific browser detail and is pushed through the HTML on Log-Out.

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    This functionality is not dissimilar to the functionality/strategy that Facebook uses and the "more logged-in" functionality that Eric Schmidt had mentioned that Google was looking to pursue some years back; however, with the exception of GMAIL there still hasn't been a socially interactive app that Google has unveiled that would make people WANT to access again and again without re-login.