‘Zombie cookies’ won’t die: Microsoft admits use, HTML5 looms as new vector

One year ago this week, I wrote about zombie cookies, describing how Disney, MySpace, and NBC Universal had just been sued for using zombie cookies to track people even if they have gone to great lengths to disable, block, or delete cookies. Seven months ago, I mentioned that Adobe had taken up the pitchfork and vowed to make Flash zombie cookies a thing of the past.

So it's pretty shocking that Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford researcher, caught Microsoft using both a cache-based zombie cookie and a more advanced type of persistent "supercookie" to track folks even if they blocked or deleted browser cookies. Microsoft surreptitiously tracked users who had the temerity to visit MSN.com (in the United States, Canada, and Spain), the U.S. English home page of www.microsoft.com, or the Microsoft Store. Read more...