What an utter load of whingeing bollux!
Firstly, cookies are harmless and do not delve into your computer and send out your email address to spammers. Jeez, do a bit of research before runing around screaming "conspiracy" and wetting yourselves.
The cookies from valueclick are from the adverts at the bottom of the page and they are targetted regionally. The server that hosts them checks your IP address and if it can determine if they are from a particular region then an appropriate ad is served. you can't do anything about hiding your IP address.
Secondly, a cookie stores information that can ONLY be used by the server that put it there and no one else. It will record the last time you saw a particular ad for example or if you clicked on an ad it will register when you did so. If you click repeatedly on an ad to try and drum up business or something then it will only count the first click or whatever. There is nothing sisnister about the cookies and if you don't want to accept them then you can set your browser to refuse cookies or accept them selectively.
The kind of conspiracy shrieks I am seeing in the posts above are hilarious. The IPG advert is a Flash advert and if you decide not to have a Flash enabled browser then that is your perogative but as it is an industry standard you are only causing yourself more problems by not havong it as your browser gets confused for all those seconds looking for the Flash Player before giving up the ghost.
I'm sorry if you feel that there is too much advertising on PPRuNe but it is what pays for the servers. Consider that it now costs around AUS$15,000 a month to run PPRuNe with all the infrastructure involved and you can see why we can't accomodate a minority who object to advertising. PPRuNe also requires groups like the IPG who are a group of pilots trying to provide a service for other pilots and not some faceless corporation pretending it cares about us when it doesn't. IPG has done a load of programming for PPRuNe and is continualy developing new software for us to use.
So, for the conspiracy theorists amongst you, just remember that any cookies you are getting from PPRuNe are used to spy on your sexual habits and we then sell the information gathered to porn spammers so those of you not receiving any spam are probably going to heaven whilst those of you getting loads of it are not!
PPRuNe agressivley protects the privacy of all its members and we do not give email addresses to anyone and we make sure the software is set up to prevent automatic harvesting of email addresses. If you reckon you are getting more spam after reading PPRuNe then I challenge you to provide details of how we go about it. Just think, I could double my revenue overnight if I had pop-up adverts.