Slashdot Mirror
Watchdog "Not Ready" To Probe Cookie Complaints
nk497 writes "The UK data watchdog has admitted it doesn't have any staff investigating cookie consent complaints, more than a year after the law came in via an EU directive. The regulation requires websites to ask before dropping cookies and other tracking devices onto users' computers, and came into law in May 2011. The Information Commissioner's Office gave websites a year's grace period to update their websites, but failed to use that time to get its team together, meaning the 320 reports of sites not in compliance it's already received haven't been investigated at all."
This is stupid. Why is the burden on millions of websites instead of a handful of browsers? Mandate that any web browser distributed in the U.K. default to "Ask me before allowing cookies." It should be the default anyway.
I've been wanting to say exactly this every time I see another retarded story about cookies. Thanks for giving me a hand.
Just in case it was missed: COOKIES ARE HELPFUL TO YOU, YOU MORONS.
Want online shopping? Cookies.
Automatic login to 9000 different sites? Cookies.
Remembered configurations and searches? Cookies.
Convenient URLs that you can remember? Cookies.
As the parent explained, YOU hold the control in deciding what, how and when sites can store cookies on your machine. If you can't be arsed to spend a half hour learning to protect your privacy, you don't deserve it.
Dim-witted, pandering, posturing politicians passing some idiotic "cookie legislation" is going to cause you to have *less* privacy, security and convenience.
Number 3 is covered once you asked for permission, which you can do using number 1.
Only if you force users to create an account just to keep your site's media player size the same or some other trivial but convenient detail.
That leaves 'analytics', which is usually PR-speak for 'tracking user browsing and selling it to the highest bidder'.
Nonsense. Every business I've worked with in recent years has used analytics to see how visitors are using their own site and ultimately provide a better experience for those visitors. Every single one. And for the record, exactly none of them sold any of that analytics data to anyone.
You want to track me? You need my permission, and you don't get it by default.
Then turn off cookies in your browser. It's not hard, and if you don't know how, a quick Google search will surely tell you.
However, I'm afraid I'm not going to compromise on the experience I can offer the other 99.997% of visitors to my sites because you want to make a fuss. No-one's forcing you to visit those sites, our policies are clearly stated and always have been, we're not doing anything even remotely shady in the eyes of just about everyone (except you, apparently) and just about everyone including us and many other visitors benefits if we pay attention to our analytics reports.
You might like to consider that if you really feel strongly about Internet privacy, you aren't doing anyone any favours either by scaremongering or by attempting to redefine commonly understood terms like "tracking" to mean something convenient for your argument but different to what everyone else means by them. When those of us who want to improve the privacy situation without throwing the baby out with the bathwater come to write to our politicians or send money to privacy groups, all it takes to counteract our reasoned arguments is one PR guy for a commercial ad network and someone hysterical like you, and the politicians who aren't experts are convinced that the advertisers are the only ones being calm and sensible, and therefore nothing needs to be done at all.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.