The EU is considering new privacy laws that would ban cookies. For the non-Netty of you out there, cookies are small files which web pages can save to your machine. These files can serve a purpose as simple as confirming that you’ve visited the site before, to storing what information you typed there for convenience next time you visit — to purposes as possibly devious as noting what advertising sites you clicked through to, what you purchased from them, and what sales pitches seem to be effective.
It’s mostly benign technology, in my opinion, serving useful purposes (on sites such as Amazon). For those who don’t want even this tiny privacy hole, every browser I know (even IE) has tools to block or clear off cookies, and IE is adding even finer granularity of control to this.
By and large the EU has much stricter privacy laws that the US — sometimes a good thing, sometimes not, think I. This is one case where the endeavor for privacy may actually remove some good functionality in return for minimal added protection.
(Via NextDraft)