Cookie Consent Laws Come into Force This Weekend

If you are located in Europe or the UK, this weekend marks the beginning of the implementation of legislation controlling the use and type of cookies websites may store on your computer. Websites must now comply with the new legislation beginning Sunday and ask for permission to leave cookies, some of which track your Internet movements.

Although the majority of websites in the UK and across Europe will not conform to the new rules, British authorities have said that they will help rather than prosecute companies that are seeking to obey the rules.

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The move to a cookiless web should be the way to go. Will this ever happen?

Methadras said:

The move to a cookiless web should be the way to go. Will this ever happen?

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Cookies do serve a useful purpose, so you'd need something to replace this functionality, or do without it.

Like a system where the website stored data on every user who accessed it, so IP 212.3.5.7:120s cookie would be stored in a kind of anonymous user account, which would lead to problems. Could tie it to some hardware ID, like the Intel technology in the SB chips (for unique identifier) combined with some OS user account ID, but that probably wouldn't be terribly secure either, and mean companies would be storing more info than they were already.

Or the user would need an account on every website on which they wanted preferences and past activity stored, or an overall account on the internet. But the company would have to be trustworthy, which few are. Get the EFF to run it or something. Though not really amounting to much, there probably just needs to be stronger enforceable laws about use and what can be used where and when.

Ah, that explains the message I got on Top Gear UK's website the other day asking permission to store cookies. Guess they started early.

This is dumb. The real issue is cross domain cookies. Regulating that would solve most of the problem while not impacting the vast majority of the the functionality (excluding tracking/ad targeting) of sites.

Its a paradox.
You have to create a cookie to store a variable saying they accept cookies.

I can't see it sticking, especially when it comes to session cookies.