EU has investigated internet technology, and discovered that http-cookies are an invasion of privacy. Therefore, a new directive has been made, that forces consent before using cookies. To many programmers, this seems idiotic - cookies have worked well for 15 years, and continue to do so, and many businesses require them to be able to track users around. Even more, cookie permissions could easily be handled in the browser, but most people disable it because many websites are annoying to use if the popups keep appearing. So this directive, which will become law in EU, is a game changer, and it seems to have caught much of the industry by surprise.
However, who says that we should always push the limits of what technology can do, disregarding common sense for how to build a sane society? This new directive just means that cookies are not delivered unless consent is given. How are we going to implement this? You can ask for consent for sending all the cookies you want, so that your site can continue to work as before. Or you can switch to use other methods than cookies, for handling sessions. Using URL-based session identification makes the URLs annoying longer, so changing all links to POST-requests actually makes sense, even though it's surely not nice.
Besides the consent, there is actually something new: The "informed" part. What happens when non-technical users start to learn about what cookies can do? Will they just ignore it and move forward, or will it actually reduce the amount of cookies? Will there be technical changes to how cookies work? Which other technology will be the next to be regulated for privacy?
One thing is sure: technical workarounds are not meant to be legal. If the user can be tracked, no matter if it is by cookie or something else, there must be an informed consent.
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