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Comment by bolder88 | Hacker News Reader

Endless popups, pop downs, moving content around. The absolute worst is pages that create a 'popup' at the top and move the content down just as you're about to click something. So you end up clicking something else.

And for what!? To scare the user about cookies? We had the scare about cookies in the 90s when they were explained as "bits of code that websites can infect your machine with".

Cookies are ONE method websites can use to track you. If you click "don't use cookies", the website will just use another method to track you. It's absolutely trivial to bypass.

And it's trivial for any user to configure their browser to reject cookies for any website they wish to.

So what has been achieved by this idiotic law?

Absolutely nothing.

It's yet another fantastic demonstration why the EU is such a bad idea.

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Cookies are just ONE method, that's why the law is not limited to cookies, but instead refers to all client side saving technologies (of which the cookies are the most common). Your post is yet another fantastic demonstration why criticizing the EU, without knowing what you're talking about, is such a bad idea.

I know precisely what I'm talking about.

Still, I guess I should have been clearer - there are several "non client side" saving technologies which are outside the scope of this law, and make the law completely useless.

Further though, I would criticise the EU whatever the content of this law. We do not need a law to enforce rules about a specific technology of HTTP. What the hell business is it of the EU?

The EU is absolutely obsessed with writing up laws to invade into absolutely every area of our lives.

> The EU is absolutely obsessed with writing up laws to invade into absolutely every area of our lives.

That is a funny way to frame it! Being European I, for one, welcome a government trying to protect me from the massive, for-profit, privacy invasion and user data trafficking that the internet business currently is.

And, as said before, the "cookie law" applies to any form of user tracking and storing or exchanging user-specific data. You can't code around it. Sending visitor data to Google Analytics server-side could technically hide the cookie, but it would legally be exactly the same as using the cookie based client-side javascript.

Up next, "large image law".

The internet is blighted by large images, which use up peoples valuable bandwidth. These should be opt in. Before giving the user a large image, a popup should display to ensure the user wants to download a large image.

Can you not see how crazy it is to start down this road?

I am by no means expert of particular EU laws, but as far as had been explained to me, the laws adopted in member states do not specifically point out cookies. They are more general. To simplify, they state that users should not be tracked without them consenting. The exact technology used is irrelevant.

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