It’s legal to place cookies, but it isn’t necessarily the friendliest thing to to to a visitor–yet many sites do it, even to one-time, non-registered users. That said, users do need to keep this in mind and, if they object, set their browsers to reject cookies. You can also inspect the cookies on your system and delete them from within your browser.

Most browsers today also offer a “private browing” mode that blocks all cookies for an entire session (until you close the browser application) and this offers you a way to explore without receiving tracking code from sites.