I have never found computer cookies threatening because most companies don’t even use the information they collect. But here’s the first cogent explanation I’ve seen as to why we ought to let advertisers put cookies on our computers. I believe we’ll get to the point where some companies are ‘accredited’ and most users will trust cookies from them.

NY Times: Spyware Heats Up the Debate Over Cookies by Bob Tedeschi

It isn’t necessarily just corporate America that is threatened by the anticookie fervor, Ms. [Lorraine] Ross [VP of Sales for USAToday.com] said – the deleters stand to suffer, too. For example, cookies help a computer limit how many times a user sees annoying ads like a floating, animated message. Such "frequency caps," to use industry parlance, are common among publishers. "So cookies are a really good thing for managing the user’s experience," she said. Last year, though, Ms. Ross said executives at the company debated how effective their frequency limits were, since a growing number of Internet users were deleting cookies and possibly seeing lots of animated ads.