{"id":267,"date":"2003-10-02T03:16:42","date_gmt":"2003-10-02T10:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2003-10-02T03:16:42","modified_gmt":"2003-10-02T10:16:42","slug":"cookie-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/10\/cookie-monster\/","title":{"rendered":"Cookie, Monster?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A comment<\/a> left on this site a few days ago led me to the contributor’s blog<\/a>, where I discovered an odd disclaimer: “In accordance with Swedish law I must inform you of cookies,” it begins. Impossible, I thought. Fear of cookies is so 1998. Surely no technologically savvy government, having read their primer on cookies<\/a>No, really, read the primer<\/a>.<\/span>, could possibly come up with a law<\/a> so overbearing, given the target. But I was wrong. As of July this year, Swedish websites using cookies have to tell visitors this is the case. In addition, they have to explain to visitors how to turn off cookies in their browsers. Being out of the country, I completely missed this. Two<\/a> bloggers<\/a> noticed (that I found), but nobody made a fuss, and — now that I look for it — Swedish websites that use cookies do indeed carry warnings<\/a> not entirely different in tone to those on cigarette packs in the US.<\/p>\n

First off, I object to this law on esthetic grounds. How dare anyone tell me what text I should display on my<\/em> website, thus ruining its clean, sparse linesI don’t use cookies at the moment, but I could well be if I were using one of many popular website traffic meters, and I am seriously considering doing so without telling you about it. In fact, maybe I just lied about my site’s cookie usage.<\/span>. But more importantly, the internet is a public space, and in public places, you should expect to have your actions recorded as a unique but anonymous user. Next time you go to Stockholm’s NK department store, you will<\/em> be observed by security cameras. Will anyone bother to ask you if that’s okay? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

The Swedish royal family agrees with me: Visit their official website<\/a> and you’ll get two juicy, warning-free cookies deposited on your hard drive The cookies are called IntraComUserID<\/em> and JSESSIONID<\/em>.<\/span>. Swedes with reluctant cookie warnings on their site are invited to jettison them and join their sovereign in his revolt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A comment left on this site a few days ago led me to the contributor’s blog, where I discovered an odd disclaimer: “In accordance with Swedish law I must inform you of cookies,” it begins. Impossible, I thought. Fear of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-4j","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}