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FCC Meets To Investigate Cookie Abuse
PreacherTom writes to tell us BusinessWeek is reporting that the FCC and the Center for Digital Democracy plan to meet in order to discuss abuses with regard to cookies. From the article: "Online advertisers have a sweet tooth for cookies. Not the kind you bake, but the digital kind — those tiny files that embed themselves on a PC and keep tabs on what Web sites are visited on which machines. But cookies could have a bad aftertaste for consumers. Privacy advocates say the files are being force fed in large quantities to computer users, and they're demanding that the government put some advertisers on a diet."
Is this really an area we need more laws about? The dangers of cookies have been overblown for a long time. Not to mention that fact that all browsers give the user more than adequate control over their cookies.
If this is the best thing the FCC can find to waste their time on, then they have become worthless.
Spencer Ogden
Try browsing with cookies on an "ask me every time" sort of basis. Even the most unlikely websites will demand a cookie. What ever happened to sane usage of cookies where they'd only be set if you did something on the site that initiated a cookie transfer (e.g. logging in, starting a shopping cart, storing your preferences)?
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Laws don't always correct things. This isn't something you can legislate. The sheer number of exceptions would make this law more complicated than anyone could follow or enforce.
Don't like cookies? Don't visit the sites that use them.
So this, like many other toppics like this, raises the question:
The FCC only has so much juresdiction. Would this apply to webpages that are hosted in the US? How about webpages that are being viewed in the US? Or what if they are hosted and vewed outside the US, but go through some wire in the US (or even worse, some satelite above the US...)
Of course, you could always regulate businesses and the way they do business in the US, but that shouldn't really be the FCCs responsibility. Not to mention that a business on the Net isn't just in the "US", especially if it sells ideas, information, or services, which are non-physical things that don't always cross borders and such.
It'll be interesting how this will play out in the next couple of years.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
When will our government learn that you can't legislate intelligence.
Hell, our population already proved we can't elect it, now mod me up for taking a crack at the President.
Now with more sodium!!
Another cookie article, and yet more cooking/baking analogies. Someone should write a cookie monster Greasemonkey script which brings up that particular character ("And now, me eat cookie! Owmwowmowmwowmowmwmowm...."), before setting document.cookie to null.
Many sites stuff advertising and tracking-related data in there alongside your login/auth information in cookies, so it seems you can't win if you need to browse with credentials etc. Blocking 3rd-party cookies is probably the safest bet against ads and so on at this point though, without disrupting cookies required just to browse/authenticate.
No, you're hyperbolizing. Some people (myself included) won't be happy until the government sets limits on how personal information can be used by corporations. I don't like the fact, for example, that my mother's phone company shares personal information with her Internet provider who then buys information derived from cookies to develop a package that allows telemarketers to target her based on what Web sites she uses. This is not what the Internet is there for, and I personally want a stop put to it. Limiting abuse of cookies (especially cross-site hand-offs that are used specifically to track broad activity across disconnected sites) would be a good first step, and one that should have happened years ago when certain companies which NDAs prevent me from naming (not related to my current company, thankfully) started the practice.
Cookies should only be able to store data you give a company. A cookie is not going through your computer and associate your cookie with your name, email address, credit card number, sexual proclivity, and so on.
Now you can say that prevalent advertisers like doubleclick can make inferences based on what sites you go to that they serve ads for. This is one reason that I block anything to/from doubleclick. The fact that this also has the advantage of eliminating several ads as I browse the web? Outstanding. I fail to see how this should suddenly become illegal for doubleclick to do.
So then you can argue "Yeah, but if you sign up with the website, or make a purchase, they can associate a cookie with all the information they gave you!" Yes, and so can any brick-and-morter who wants to track purchases made with the same credit card. Or grocery stores that give you "Discount Cards" that require a name, address, and phone number. Use that discount card once with a credit card and they have even more information on you.
So I fail to see how data acquired through cookies is so bad we need laws "protecting" us. Any privacy nut is going to be willing to either block cookies from certain sites or just make them session-long. Anyone else is running with about the same loss of privacy that comes with using a credit card anyway.
If you do not want online companies to know who you are (and therefore track you), then do not give out information.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
But if you're going to buy from Amazon (for instance), you're going to have to suck it up and accept their cookies to use the shopping cart.
Exactly. I agree to use their cookies to enable the shopping cart. I'll even accept that the cookies then allow Amazon to make better suggestions for the next book I purchase. That does not mean I agree to allow someone else to profile me because Amazon sold the information, in specific or in aggregate.
Don't patronise the website? Well damn, I'd have to stop using the internet because it's such a prevalent condition, and, as my original questions illustrate, even informed consumers don't have reasonably easy options. *That's* why it should be legislated, consumers don't have another viable option.
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
I've browsed the internet with my ever changing browser of choice set to ask me about any and all cookies for years now. The number of cookies per site has been very steadily and rapidly increasing since their conception.
I hate it.
Back when they first appeared, they were there to help us maintain our logins through the website, not lose our shipping carts etc. It wasn't bad, it made sense. I was willing to let websites store my username and password so that I didn't have to keep logging back in constantly.
Honestly, I don't even see why we have cookies anymore. There should be far better ways to maintain a persistant login by now. Ways which don't threaten our privacy, or provide a medium for the same bastards that invented pop-ups and pop-unders to destroy common decency.
The first time I visit any website I am bombarded by cookies. This isn't just one cookie, this is as many as seven from a single page. Why in the name of Linux Torvalds do these sites need seven cookies to function? Clicking the next page bombards me again, and will keep bombarding me until I get through all 255 or more ad3.adserve.cookies.net like services. Only then can I finally visit the website in peace, until next month when a new advertiser joins the loop.
So now my cookie accept/block list is the size of New York's phone book. Heaven forbid in that barrage of cookies there was actually an important one. With all the obscure names they're given it's impossible to tell until you can't maintain your login. Now I get to play the age old 'Find the needle in the haystack' game, new millenium version.
This is beyond sanity. I don't know if the FCC has the right or the ability to do something about this, but something should be done. I don't have any idea what. Boycotting pages with cookies means 99.9% of the internet is off limits.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!