Do we still need to worry about users turning off cookies?

Question

I've noticed that a lot of sites don't bother anymore with work-arounds so users who have turned their cookies off can still get the same experience on the site. Has that problem just gone away in modern web development? Have we gotten to a point where nobody does it, so we don't need to bother?

Answer 1

I think I put this in the same category as JavaScript. Most people will have cookies enabled, but there will be a few people who have them turned off. There isn't the scare like there was in the mid 90s about evil corporations tracking you all over the net etc. People have become more accepting about how the web works and what is required to have the convenience of web sites remembering who you are etc.

Answer 2

Some people still turn off cookies every once in a while. Usually because they wanted to test something and then forget to leave them off. Nowadays most web apps require cookies on so I think it's perfectly acceptable that instead of complex workarounds to provide the same user experience with or without cookies you can live with just a simple check and a message stating that without cookies the user won't be able to use the site.

There are lots of major websites that behave this way.

Answer 3

My 2c: cookies are good by default and Javascript is evil by default.

As to what general user sentiment is... I'd do cookie detection still so that you can display a meaningful error rather than simply not working if your users are blocking cookies for whatever reason. Don't bother trying to work around it though.

Answer 4

I'm going to guess that it'd be worthwhile running a test to see specifically if your visitors have cookies turned off, because different groups would have different issues. (if it's paranoia, security restrictions, etc.) A website catering to government employees might see higher percentages of cookie non-acceptance than other sites.

As some browsers (or plugins) allow customizing your acceptance of cookies by server or domain, it's possible that even two sites with identical user populations might have different levels of 'trust', if the users believe that one site seems shady.