Hard on the heels of reports of rising cookie deletion comes a new study that finds that cookie rejection rates are increasing as well.

The WebTrends study focuses on third-party cookies, often used by Web analytics firms to track a site’s unique visitors and their responses to marketing campaigns and Website promotions. Cookie rejection is enabled by new software mechanisms that block cookies from ever being set on users’ computers.

Like cookie deletion, cookie rejection can distort key metrics, artificially inflating unique visitor counts and undercounting repeat visitors.

According to WebTrends, the cookie rejection rate rose to 12.4% in April 2005 from 2.84% in January 2004.

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