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FCC Meets To Investigate Cookie Abuse
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Nov 15, 2006 12:09 PM
from the cookie-monsters dept.
from the cookie-monsters dept.
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."
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Delete Cookies, Inflate Net Traffic Estimates 217 comments
eldavojohn writes "In my browser, I regularly go to the tools menu and clear my private data. This includes my cookies. As a result, people like me who destroy cookies by the thousands may be inflating estimates of Web traffic by up to 150 percent. People have good reasons for clearing out cookies — we've heard about bad cookies before (and I think the FCC is still investigating the issue). But every time you delete cookies, many of the sites you've visited count you as a new visitor next time."
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Alright, I'll Cut Back! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But when you leave a box of those girl scout confections next to me, what do you think I'm going to do? They're gone after a few lines of coding and I don't even remember eating them!
*breaks down sobbing
I'm a sick man! I need help! Someone just check me into the Betty Crocker clinic already!
Suggested tag: thinkofthecookies
FCC Meets to Investigate Cookie Abuse (Score:5, Funny)
When contacted for comment on this... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:When contacted for comment on this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
As the (censored) big blue guy says... (Score:2)
Are you kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is the best thing the FCC can find to waste their time on, then they have become worthless.
Re:Are you kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
"FCC Meets to Over-Assert Itself Once Again"
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I think that happened quite a few years ago. Some symptoms include only catering to a small minority (eg wardrobe malfunction?) among other things.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In Firefox's preferences (2.0) click on the "Privacy" tab and change "Keep until" to "I close Firefox". Then whenever you close the browser, all the cookies are gone. For sites you want to be able to persist (bank, slashdot, etc), put them in the exceptions. I've been doing it this way for years. You can also set it to block cookies for certain sites (I block google,
The summary is an understatement. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Cookies are a tool. They can be used for cool things, or crappy things.
-Rick
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The summary is an understatement. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh man, remember those good old days? Before every site was covered in AdSense. When MySpace was the glimmer in some nerds eye. Before every moron lip-synced horrible songs on YouTube. When email was used for communication. When people actually used correct English. When Pluto was still a planet.
I remember!!! Flobble-de-flee!
Parent
Oh criminy (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the government supposed to do next, make it illegal for anyone to download a virus?
Honestly, some people won't be satisfied until the government publishes a 500 page manual on how to wipe your ass and makes it illegal to do it in any other way.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think it's ever been enforced though.
They might of finally removed it though. they were cleaning up the books on some stupid laws like that.
Re:Oh criminy (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I had to look it up, just to be sure:
hyperbolize: overstate: to enlarge beyond bounds o
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was if she was shopping for hair dye. It was if she was a frequent poster to the "blondes have more fun after 50" message boards.
But that's not interesting. What's interesting is that she usually follows links that talk about hair, or that she spends over $50 only on sites that have distinctly senior-citizen pitch. This requires examination of her behavior in a larger context.
That information, when tied to a telep
Re: (Score:2)
its only to be expected, surely, but the level of hypocrisy is about to go off the scale. if it takes government legislation to control their behavior because they can't, or won't, control it themselves, then thats w
Re:Oh criminy (Score:4, Funny)
I wouldn't mind if the government gave me a 500 page manual for wiping my ass. As long as the pages were soft - that is.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Dear FCC, I just wanted to write and congratulate you on a job well done with your recent endeavor. Sir, I am seated in the smallest room of my house. I have your manual in front of me. Soon it will be behind me. Thank you.
--SeaFox
More laws != good laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't like cookies? Don't visit the sites that use them.
Re:More laws != good laws (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I fail to see how such a law is very useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Laws don't always correct things
Sure, they do. They correct the perception that congressmen don't do anything to deserve their paychecks.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, the sites that use them. Otherwise known as, the Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
It'd be a different story if browser developers were in league with advertisers to force browsers to accept all cookies and to easily share them between websites. If that were the case, I could see Congress taking issue with it, as well as the courts.
Re: (Score:2)
(raises pitchfork in an up and down motion)
Yarr, I agree. What we need is a law against useless laws!
(more pitchfork waving)
Get some new material (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks, Business Week. I've never heard any of those before. Perhaps you can stick in a few "roadkill on the information superhighway" gags while you're at it.
Re: (Score:2)
Keeping those cookie puns hot and fresh in the oven, instead of cutting them out, ensures that lazy journalists can keep rolling in the dough.
International (Score:4, Insightful)
The FCC only has so much juresdiction. Would this apply to webpages that are hosted in the US? How about webpages that are being viewed in the US? Or what if they are hosted and vewed outside the US, but go through some wire in the US (or even worse, some satelite above the US...)
Of course, you could always regulate businesses and the way they do business in the US, but that shouldn't really be the FCCs responsibility. Not to mention that a business on the Net isn't just in the "US", especially if it sells ideas, information, or services, which are non-physical things that don't always cross borders and such.
It'll be interesting how this will play out in the next couple of years.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Harhar, I just nullified your +4 Insightful comment. I wonder, will this give me a +troll?
2 questions (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly. I agree to use their cookies to enable the shopping cart. I'll even accept that the cookies then allow Amazon to make better suggestions for the next book I purchase. That does not mean I agree to allow someone else to profile me because Amazon sold the information, in specific or in aggregate.
Don't patronise the website? Well damn, I'd have to stop using t
Cookie Invasion! (Score:2, Redundant)
All hail Cookie Monster!
Re: (Score:2)
Riiight. And "Alexander" is actually the guy who doesn't read - "A"= not, "Lex" = read, Ander from "andros" = man.
Fun with greek and latin roots, part 2.
FCC Mandate (Score:2)
One accepts a cookie. It is not forced.
They have time for this on top of everything else? (Score:2)
cookie problem (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're smart, you won't be tracked by cookies. But I've seen scary stackloads of cookies on machines running Microsoft crap. Come to think of it, even Firefox accepts all cookies by default.
Making browsers default to a safer cookie setting (disabled, or session-only) would be a step in the right direction, and so would simply outlawing data-mining (not that I expect anyone would take any notice of such a ban); but ultimately, it's still no substitute for users having some smarts.
Re: (Score:2)
The FCC won't let us be. (Score:2)
Cookies are used for a lot of things. Keeping track of shopcarts, tracking client movement across pages so pages can be made more user friendly or guide you back where you come from, etc. Which of the thousands of applications of cookies are going to be deemed "good"?
Now, let's assume they come up with something. Wha
What you give them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now you can say that prevalent advertisers like doubleclick can make inferences based on what sites you go to that they serve ads for. This is one reason that I block anything to/from doubleclick. The fact that this also has the advantage of eliminating several ads as I browse the web? Outstanding. I fail to see how this should suddenly become illegal for doubleclick to do.
So then you can argue "Yeah, but if you sign up with the website, or make a purchase, they can associate a cookie with all the information they gave you!" Yes, and so can any brick-and-morter who wants to track purchases made with the same credit card. Or grocery stores that give you "Discount Cards" that require a name, address, and phone number. Use that discount card once with a credit card and they have even more information on you.
So I fail to see how data acquired through cookies is so bad we need laws "protecting" us. Any privacy nut is going to be willing to either block cookies from certain sites or just make them session-long. Anyone else is running with about the same loss of privacy that comes with using a credit card anyway.
If you do not want online companies to know who you are (and therefore track you), then do not give out information.
I'm appalled (Score:2)
Cookies do not "embed themselves." (Score:3, Informative)
Cookies are passive content; they do not have the capapbility of doing anything. Web Browsers are what make the decision to download and store this purely optional advisory-only information.
Again, you are describing a behavior of web browsers (and probably not all web browsers), not cookies.
I have always held that the software that I run, is my agent. If I run a web browser that essentially tells a web server what other pages I have visited, then by running that software, I have opted in. I guess the issue is that most computer users are not really aware of what they are running and what actions their agents are taking on their behalf, so they see the lack of making conscious decisions as "not opting out" rather than "opting in." I understand this and have some sympathy for this viewpoint, but it ultimately is technically incorrect, an illusion. I don't think you can't redefine the terms "opt out" and "opt in" to mean things they don't really mean, without having some undesirable consequences down the road.
The problem we face, is that we make unconscious or uninformed decisions, but that doesn't mean we aren't making those decisions; it merely means we're doing it poorly. I would much rather that users learn more about how their web browsers work and what the privacy risks are, than for new laws to be passed that micromanage what a web server admin is required to do, should their server be configured to send a certain header. It is ridiculous to have laws and regulations that get down to such detailed, technical levels, and I think that sort of thing is how we have managed to turn ourselves into a "lawyer society" where the law is so huge and complex that a layman is simply unable to know what the law is without expensive help from a specialist.
What Cookie Abuse? (Score:2)
You know why they did it? (Score:2)
yeah
The cookie
yeah
The cookie
OKOKOK.. I'll stop.
Seriously, Organizations need to realize that pulling the US government into anything to get something regulated is almost always analogous to using nuclear weapons and lawyers. You only use them when you know both sides will lose, but you want to make sure your enemy is screwed just as badly.
I hate cookies (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate it.
Back when they first appeared, they were there to help us maintain our logins through the website, not lose our shipping carts etc. It wasn't bad, it made sense. I was willing to let websites store my username and password so that I didn't have to keep logging back in constantly.
Honestly, I don't even see why we have cookies anymore. There should be far better ways to maintain a persistant login by now. Ways which don't threaten our privacy, or provide a medium for the same bastards that invented pop-ups and pop-unders to destroy common decency.
The first time I visit any website I am bombarded by cookies. This isn't just one cookie, this is as many as seven from a single page. Why in the name of Linux Torvalds do these sites need seven cookies to function? Clicking the next page bombards me again, and will keep bombarding me until I get through all 255 or more ad3.adserve.cookies.net like services. Only then can I finally visit the website in peace, until next month when a new advertiser joins the loop.
So now my cookie accept/block list is the size of New York's phone book. Heaven forbid in that barrage of cookies there was actually an important one. With all the obscure names they're given it's impossible to tell until you can't maintain your login. Now I get to play the age old 'Find the needle in the haystack' game, new millenium version.
This is beyond sanity. I don't know if the FCC has the right or the ability to do something about this, but something should be done. I don't have any idea what. Boycotting pages with cookies means 99.9% of the internet is off limits.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... maybe when some intelligence enters the government?
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, never become a pathologist. My adventures through Pathology at med school taught me that they are sick bastards - almost every disease has a food related description, from "nutmeg livers" to "bread and butter" hearts, etc. Incredible. At least with computers you're not holding Mrs. Jones' kidneys in your hands when you talk about food!