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."

Comments

Like anyone is going to follow this

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to wonder if the people who wrote this law even considered the complaints they likely received at the time to the effect that it would make the internet practically unusable. Yes, it's a good sentiment to not want to "track" people, but with the increasing use of cookies for actual technical purposes - not to mention logins and the like - this would quickly become unfeasible and irritating. Anyway, what of serverside tracking - you know, like Facebook almost certainly does using its extensive "Like this" and Facebook integration APIs? I am more worried about that than cookies.

No other country's developers are going to give a crap what the EU/British government says. All this will do is hamper European businesses' internet presence and probably cause a few notable companies (Google, etc) to sever ties with the specific countries actually enforcing it. There are certainly plenty of other reasons to do so these days.

It's kind of sad when the US is one of the less technically inept governments in the world, and it only is because of general failure to do anything.

--BKY1701

Re:Like anyone is going to follow this

[mvdwege]

All four of your examples are examples of user tracking.

Face it, cookies are a workaround for the stateless nature of HTTP. Cookies are meant for tracking by definition

And you know what? Numbers 1 and 2 are covered. Number 3 is covered once you asked for permission, which you can do using number 1. That leaves 'analytics', which is usually PR-speak for 'tracking user browsing and selling it to the highest bidder'.

So of your three examples, 2 of them are covered, one of them is covered by extension, and one of them can be done without. I'd say, no great loss.

You want to track me? You need my permission, and you don't get it by default.

Cookies suck

[symbolset]

The WWW is supposed to be stateless for a reason. I'm going to come right out and say that the cookie is the dumbest invention since Token Ring.

Re:Cookies suck

[symbolset]

All the essential data can be passed in the URI. You need one short session signifier that can be added to the extant argument list. This is fine in https - which all websites should use for logged-in users, though it's a problem in http.

Re:Cookies suck

[symbolset]

Tim Berners-Lee. The guy who invented the thing.

Re:Cookies suck

[Blakey Rat]

And God-forbid someone copies their URL and pastes it to a buddy on IM or Twitter.

Oh wait, let me guess, you combine your URL session with an IP address, right?

In which case: God-forbid someone switch wifi networks expecting their session to still be valid. Ride mass-transit? Do they provide wifi with a constantly shifting IP as the train moves? Good luck getting on to my super-awesome no-cookies site! Cellphone? Idiot! Cellphones can no longer browse the web!

It's a damn stupid law

[maroberts]

Am I the only one who thinks that these popups which state "we're using cookies" is highly annoying?

Almost everyone apart from your aged grannie knows that you are tracked on sites by use of cookies, so what is the point of this bureaucratic nonsense? It's almost like a secret plot; a small step to making the net unusable.

  If you really want to ban something, block sites from opening 3rd party poker/porn sessions in windows behind your current window, not that such things happen to me of course.....

[/rant]