Cookie Law Research Paper

Words: 1263
Pages: 6

The Internet is an interconnected network of networks. It allows data to transfer around the world in the blink of an eye. Since its invention, the Internet has been used for many things; from social media, to news gathering, to entertainment. Though a very useful tool, the Internet has the potential to have damaging and life ruining effects. This can occur when the user personally uploads their own information or it is taken from them via a 3rd party tracking cookie. Cookies in and of themselves do some very helpful things. They store website preferences, understand your usage of a particular website, and remember if you have logged into a website previously (Geary). These pieces of data then sent to services such as Google Analytics for website …show more content…
It consists of a short term, immediate solution, which is to simply set the settings in your Internet browser to not accept 3rd party cookies. This means that “bad cookies” such as tracking cookies, will not be automatically written to disk when a user goes to a website. It also consists of a long term solution: enacting something similar to the European Union’s cookie law, except for the United States. The Cookie Law would require websites to request authentication to write cookies to disk. This would give users the opportunity to decline or to allow cookies if they so desired. This solution came in part from the European Union, as they had come up with the initial “Cookie Law”, the second part came from the website “usa.gov” and is also suggested in the cited Guardian article. The Usa.gov site gives a general guide to Internet safety and some precautions that you can take to protect yourself on it. This solution seeks to solve the problem by protecting users from accidentally giving out information to third parties. Part of this solution has already been implemented in the EU. Since its introduction, not a whole lot has happened. In fact, Cookielaw.org’s FAQ on the subject has a section titled “Is the law dead?”, which suggests that it has not been taken seriously or has been well implemented to the point where people think it no longer