Cookie Bill Would Protect Privacy

JSK writes "Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., has introduced a bill into Congress which, if passed, would control networks' use of cookies. DoubleClick says they'll oppose it."

User Responsibility

[pimp]

We are going to start seeing more and more legislation ostensibly
attempting to protect the innocent from the bad people (on the
Internet). Unfortunately, the reality of it is, that it is catering to
protection of the (in this case technologically) ignorant, not the
innocent.

I think one of the issues that this is trying to work toward solving,
is the general failure of the user to understand the technology, and
how to use it. Unfortunately, the general user does not understand now,
and will never understand, how cookies or most of technology works;
nor do they care. While the educated consumer is a pipe dream, I do
not think legislation catering to the uneducated user is the right way
to go. This protection will only encourage ignorance.

In violations of law, ignorance is not an excuse. If I get a parking
ticket because I didn't know that I was not allowed to park on the
street overnight, I still have to pay it. No one from the IRS came to
me after I got my first job and explained that I had to pay taxes, or
how to do them. So why is ignorance an excuse with the use of
technology? Personally, I think the process of paying taxes is far
more complicated than surfing the web and understanding cookies.

Users, and people in general, have got to start assuming responsibility
for their actions. It's much easier to plead ignorant, even if one is not,
but it is detrimental to us all.

Is this what we want?

[Zaffle]

a New Jersey senator introduced legislation Thursday that would forbid Web sites from gathering personally identifiable information from Web surfers without getting their permission first. (Emphasis added)

The phrase personally identifiable information concerns me, what exactly is it. From what I can tell, its any information that may be able to be used to identify a person. So, obviously, your slashdot userid. Thats ok, since slashdot basically asks your permission anyway. (you need to sign up first).

But what about Apaches mod_usertrack, which issues cookies automagically to the browser so the admin can follow the user around their website. (This is a good thing, since it allows webmasters to see where things could be improved). Would this be disallowed, you see, from these cookies, I can identify you when you return to the website.

The sane definition of personnaly identifable information would be information that relates to you. (eg name, address, phone, email, age, sex, etc). However, doesn't that mean that bannerad companies can still track you, so long as they don't make any attempt to identify you?.

In my opinion, this is a good thing. I don't mind seeing only techo ads, because I visit lots of tech sites, and seeing techo ads even when I visit search engines. However, lets say the Company Evil Intentions Inc., with your permission, got your name and email. Then went to doubleclick, and said, right, this user here, whats his browsing habits like? Doubleclick won't have done anything wrong, since the information they collected can't be used to identify you, but now Evil Intentions Inc now know all about those "other" sites you went to.

And of course, if we say that bannerad companies can't track you, then that should, in all fairness, go for website admins using mod_usertrack.

What about if Doubleclick picks up shop and moves to a country where it CAN gather personally identifiable information?. We are back to square one.

In my opinion, the legislation is a good one, and I'd like to see it go through. However, there is a simplier way to deal with this. Stop bannerad companies tracking you. Easy enough, disable cookies in images. That will stop doubletrack mostly, the only other way I can think is if they use layers. I haven't done html development in awhile, so I'm not sure if you can have "remote" layers, where the layer is retrieved seperate from the page. But again, just disable cookies in that.

That will stop most bannerads tracking you. I'd like to see this change in Mozilla. (Don't tell me to code it myself, I will, but only after Mozilla is stable).

So in the end, yes this legislation is good, but it won't solve the problem.

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i agree

[adpowers]

I agree that this is a dumb idea. People can just disable cookies like said earlier. Also people use cookies to improve there websites content for each person and to see which places need improvement. If I am not mistaken only the cookie that the site made itself would be sent to the server not all of them. This means that they only would now what they themselves posted. Over all cookies have more advantages than disadvantages.