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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.
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.