Great discussion. I'm glad it came up. If you guys don't mind. I'll use your comments to help me with an article I've just begun to work on (I am still only in the "thinking about the issue" stage) on the subject of cookies for PBB.

As we're seeing very clearly here in this thread, the cookie approach has some significant drawbacks. We are forced to remember and realize the cookie is far from an ideal solution to connecting buyer to referrer. It's what remained after the insuitability of IP's for the purpose was apparent enough, and we wanted to retain a connection (once created) after the end of the browser session. Another "problem" with cookies is that they are "software on your computer", and as such will always invite suspicion from some users and get increasingly DKed by increasingly conservative pesonal computer "securtity" type software.

The question whether to lock or not becomes rather academic (if not without timeliness) when you see that cookies are dead. I am more concerned with what's next, and how whatver that is will shape how we pimp ho's on the Net --