no cookies?

The EU is pondering banning cookies.

Well, not entirely:

The amendment, proposed by Dutch Parliament member W.G. van Velzen, likens cookies to “hidden identifiers” that track and store information on an Internet users’ surfing habits.

The existence of such a technology, the amendment states, “may seriously intrude on the privacy of these users. The use of such devices should therefore be prohibited unless the explicit, well-informed and freely given consent of the users concerned has been obtained.”

In other words, sites must be open and explicit about their cookie practices. And they won’t be allowed to set any cookies without users’ consent. Which doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me. The downside that The Interactive Advertising Bureau U.K sees is a world where people have to re-enter certain data with each visit. Like a username and password? Like what you do every time you turn on a computer? Gee. That’s rough.

I like the proposed law, and hope that something like that comes along to this side of the pond soon.

2 Replies to “no cookies?”

  1. I like it too.

    Cookies are really great for stuff like shopping carts and administration sites where you need to keep track of movement. But they’re only used like 1% of the time like that over here.

    Of course even with this new law PASSPORT ™ will be happy to take it’s place. But then again, the BuSH administration has been very good in keeping MicroSOft in check.

  2. I like it too.

    Cookies are really great for stuff like shopping carts and administration sites where you need to keep track of movement. But they’re only used like 1% of the time like that over here.

    Of course even with this new law PASSPORT ™ will be happy to take it’s place. But then again, the BuSH administration has been very good in keeping MicroSOft in check.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: