dstiles - 10:29 pm on Mar 22, 2012 (gmt 0)

A clarification of temporary "session" cookies - ones that help navigation through the site, allows shopping sites to retain purchase information ON THE SERVER for 20 minutes or so, but place no real data onto the browsing computer. Without these many sites cannot function properly.

Some servers (as noted in an earlier post) cannot be told to not serve sesion cookies one minute and serve them the next, so a web site then becomes broken. If you go to a web site with a web browser that has been correctly set up then you will be asked to accept a session cookie. If your browser is not correctly set up (ie "accept all cookies") then you will not see the request. Regardless, the cookie will still be sent because the server has no choice.

Why are web site owners to be penalised for something that can ONLY be properly managed by the browser itself?

Why has about 5 years of debate produced no change to the original proposal?

What happens if the web site is not UK owned/hosted? 99% of all web sites come into that category: what will the legislators do, sue the Americans, Chinese, Australians... And, of course, google, who are one of the biggest anti-privacy cookie-setters in the world.

What happens if I move all my web services abroad? Will I still be liable if a cookie is set? If I register my business abroad?

And other things but it's supper time and I'm hungry.

In short: has anyone really thought this through.