EU cookies

[RogerS]

[rant]

One of the EU's more pointless pieces of legislation was insisting that sites ask us if we want to accept cookies. Duh? Of course, we bloody do. The site probably won't work if I don't. So EU stop wasting my and everyone else's bloody time by having to click Yes or whatever every sodding time I visit the same f*****g website!

[/rant]

 

[RogerP]

Drives me mad too!

Why can't these sites use a cookie so they know I've already agreed to accepting their cookies instead of asking me every bloody time I visit.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My pet hate is the message I get after writing an email - "do you want to send this message without any subject?"
If I write a letter, do I write across the envelope what it's about?

 

[RogerS]

And they are talking about fiddling even more about it...whatever this lot means.

"During our mandate, I would like you to focus on … supporting the vice-president for the digital single market and the commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality in finalising the negotiations on an ambitious Data Protection Regulation in 2015," Juncker said. "On the basis of the outcome of this legislative process, you should prepare a reform of the e-Privacy Directive, liaising closely with the vice-president for the digital single market, with the support of the commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality."

Consent must be "freely given, specific and informed". An exception to this exists where the cookie is "strictly necessary" for the provision of a service "explicitly requested" by the user – for example, to take the user of an online shop from a product page to a checkout.
Information law specialist Marc Dautlich of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "The existing Data Protection Directive and the e-Privacy Directive are closely related. Some important definitions, including of 'consent', relevant to the e-Privacy rules are derived from the Data Protection Directive, so it is important that there is consistency across both instruments following the reforms to the EU data protection framework."
"It is not yet obvious from a reading of the proposed changes to consent rules under the planned data protection reforms how those rules would apply to the storage of personal information on computers under the e-Privacy Directive, so clarity on this point and other similar ones would be welcomed. Reforming the e-Privacy Directive would also provide an opportunity to improve on the way rules on cookies were altered in 2009 and address the rise of other technology that is expected to replace cookies for tracking individuals' online behaviour and the idiosyncrasies of how that technology works," Dautlich said.

Why can't the EU do something useful? Like making wine producers provide a list of ingredients of all the chemicals they pump into their wines? Or insist that meat and poultry is labelled halal or non-halal so that Sikhs are no longer left guessing as to what they can/cannot eat? (Their religion forbids them to eat halal on the grounds of animal cruelty)

 

[ChrisR]

I see the message on all the web sites, but as I don’t know what a cookie is, other than the American term for a biscuit. I just ignore the message, as I guess, if I don’t know what it is then I probably don’t need it. :?

Take care.

Chris R.

 

[rafezetter]

I see the message on all the web sites, but as I don’t know what a cookie is, other than the American term for a biscuit. I just ignore the message, as I guess, if I don’t know what it is then I probably don’t need it. :?

Take care.

Chris R.

No idea why it's called a cookie, but it's what most websites use to collect and store information regarding the site and your use of it. A lot of sites don't really need to keep any information about you - but do so anyway to better provide ads for things you have shown an interest in from that site or others, but ones like amazon for example use cookies to track what you've bought, your login details so you don't have to login everytime and other bits 'n' pieces- this forum uses it too - if you checked the box "keep me logged in" - that's a cookie working in the background. If you use online banking and you asked it to save certain login information, that's also a cookie.

So... have a cookie they can be helpful.

 

[ChrisR]

I see the message on all the web sites, but as I don’t know what a cookie is, other than the American term for a biscuit. I just ignore the message, as I guess, if I don’t know what it is then I probably don’t need it. :?

Take care.

Chris R.

No idea why it's called a cookie, but it's what most websites use to collect and store information regarding the site and your use of it. A lot of sites don't really need to keep any information about you - but do so anyway to better provide ads for things you have shown an interest in from that site or others, but ones like amazon for example use cookies to track what you've bought, your login details so you don't have to login everytime and other bits 'n' pieces- this forum uses it too - if you checked the box "keep me logged in" - that's a cookie working in the background. If you use online banking and you asked it to save certain login information, that's also a cookie.

So... have a cookie they can be helpful.

Many thanks for your explanation, but as I don’t know how to use them, I will leave them in the jar for someone else.

I don’t do anything with Banking on line, as I don’t know how.

So when I was in my Bank only last week to set up an Isa, I asked at the same time, how on line Banking works, and was advised by the accounts manager, that it is not worth the effort, much better to visit the branch.

Chris R.

 

[JakeS]

was advised by the accounts manager, that it is not worth the effort, much better to visit the branch.

I'm sure the accounts manager in your local bank has absolutely no ulterior motive in telling you that it's best to manage your accounts at your local branch. ;-)



Realistically, if you see that cookie warning, odds are that the site in question is storing cookies on your computer anyway; most web developers seem to treat that law as a requirement to let the user know about their cookies rather than to let the user decide whether or not to have them!

 

[RogerS]

.....
Realistically, if you see that cookie warning, odds are that the site in question is storing cookies on your computer anyway; most web developers seem to treat that law as a requirement to let the user know about their cookies rather than to let the user decide whether or not to have them!

Which neatly bring some back to my original rant about how bloody pointless this bit of EU BS is. And they are talking about meddling even more in this area! Hmmmph.

 

[StevieB]

I always thought it was 'cookie' after a fortune cookie - there is a message inside tucked out of sight. Might be completely wrong on that though!

Steve

 

[JakeS]

Which neatly bring some back to my original rant about how bloody pointless this bit of EU BS is.

To be fair to them, they legislated in the first place because people asked them to: there was a wave of paranoia in the late nineties/early two-thousands about companies using cookies to track user behaviour across sites, discover and link together personal information about individuals and sell it to third parties to target advertising specifically. It was described by privacy advocates as incredibly creepy and people demanded that Something Should Be Done. All politicians being inept and ignorant about more or less everything, we got the rather odd laws we have today... completely pointless because everyone and their dog had already willingly given away all their personal information to Facebook so they could track it over multiple sites and sell it to third parties to target advertising specifically anyway.

It does seem a weird thing to complain about, though - since to the best of my knowledge nobody's ever been prosecuted over it, the ICO has clarified that they're perfectly happy with the "continuing to use our website is implied consent that we'll put cookies on your computer" approach, and the whole thing was properly over years ago. There was only really a fuss and panic in the first place because web design firms generated fuss and panic about it as a way to get people's money helpfully 'redesigning' their sites for 'compliance'.

To my mind, while the cookies thing was a pointless waste of time, it's still illustrative of the fact that the EU does generally try and look out for the consumer rather than for big business - even if they sometimes do so in a hamfisted, half-arsed or outright incompetent manner (like most politicians). If you want to bitch about the EU ruining things, at least complain about something like the small business digital-sales VAT rubbish instead!

 

[RogerS]

....something like the small business digital-sales VAT rubbish instead!

Tell us more ?

 

[JakeS]

....something like the small business digital-sales VAT rubbish instead!

Tell us more ?

Here's one article:
http://www.theguardian.com/small-busine ... businesses

The short version is that from the beginning of this year, purely-digital sales where no material goods are sold should charge VAT for the country of purchase, not the country of sale - which means that if a business wants to sell PDFs online they have to discover the country of residence of their customer (not necessarily even possible - especially in situations where an Italian is on holiday in France and buys a thing on your website; you're supposed to forward the VAT money to Italy, not the country they were in when they bought it) and send out the VAT money to the respective tax men of each individual country customers were from.

In principle, it's fairer - because VAT should be charged by the country the consumer lives in, and digital sales previously circumvented the tax-at-point-of-import approach material goods are captured by. In principle it shouldn't be a problem for consumers, because VAT is a detail worked out by the company selling them something and shouldn't affect them at all. In reality, a lot of small businesses don't have the facilities to deal with geo-location or dealing with dozens of foreign tax offices, and some have opted to stop selling digital-only services in order to avoid liability. The weird addition is that the normal VAT thresholds - IIRC £81k revenue in the UK - are ignored for the purposes of digital sales here.

Again, it's realistically unlikely that the Greek or Polish tax offices are going to come knocking, issuing fines or demanding the extradition of "tax criminals" from the UK because some small business sold a small bit of software to one of their citizens... but it's still safer for a small business to mail out CDs than provide software or PDFs over the Internet right now, which is a bizarre unintended consequence of political incompetence!

 

[wellywood]

....something like the small business digital-sales VAT rubbish instead!

If I'm reading this correctly, this is similar to what they are trying to impose over here. Local businesses are lobbying the gummint to reduce the value of goods bought on-line and imported to NZ on which GST (VAT) is imposed. Currently, if the value is less than $400 (about 200 GBP) no duty is payable.

Having been involved for many years in the importation of goods to NZ, I have a pretty good handle on the costs involved (freight, duties and other imposts) and can see that many local businesses are working to excessive profit margins - sometimes well in excess of 50% while imploring people to 'shop locally'.

If they were less greedy, I might have some sympathy.

 

[worn thumbs]

I use Firefox and am glad that it gives me a number of choices about cookies.I always refuse to accept third party cookies and have set things up so that I am notified of any attempt to set a cookie.Some of the standard cookies persist for forty years and after a year or two of browsing you can accumulate thousands of the things and it can slow your computer down when they all get called up.I accept relevant cookies and they ease things a bit,but I try to stay in control.

I also limit javascript and have no intention of ever changing that.In the words of the old proverb,"just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you".

 

[RogerS]

Jeepers, Jake. Don't you just love the EU !

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I've just ordering some seeds -

"Our Seed Clubue to really daft seed laws, many of our fantastic vegetable seeds can only be supplied to members of our Seed Club, because they are not on the EU-approved list of permitted vegetable varieties! But membership costs just one penny per annum."

Sums it up really. They can't think what to regulate next.

 

[mseries]

I use Firefox and am glad that it gives me a number of choices about cookies.I always refuse to accept third party cookies and have set things up so that I am notified of any attempt to set a cookie.Some of the standard cookies persist for forty years and after a year or two of browsing you can accumulate thousands of the things and it can slow your computer down when they all get called up.I accept relevant cookies and they ease things a bit,but I try to stay in control.
.

Cookies don't get called up. They are stored with part of a website address to identify them. When you re-visit that site your browser sends the cookie and all the information contained therein. That's all that happens. You are safe to delete them all, then restart your collection for the sites that you want to save them for. However they may contain information that you can no longer remember so be careful.

 

[RogerS]

I use Firefox and am glad that it gives me a number of choices about cookies.I always refuse to accept third party cookies and have set things up so that I am notified of any attempt to set a cookie.Some of the standard cookies persist for forty years and after a year or two of browsing you can accumulate thousands of the things and it can slow your computer down when they all get called up.I accept relevant cookies and they ease things a bit,but I try to stay in control.
.

....However they may contain information that you can no longer remember so be careful.

Oh, I can vouch for that. I can definitely vouch for that ...

 

[Droogs]

I use Firefox and am glad that it gives me a number of choices about cookies.I always refuse to accept third party cookies and have set things up so that I am notified of any attempt to set a cookie.Some of the standard cookies persist for forty years and after a year or two of browsing you can accumulate thousands of the things and it can slow your computer down when they all get called up.I accept relevant cookies and they ease things a bit,but I try to stay in control.
.

....However they may contain information that you can no longer remember so be careful.

Oh, I can vouch for that. I can definitely vouch for that ...

ditto :roll: