Should Governments Mandate Cookie Transparency?
from the is-that-needed? dept
Still, even once you understand the details, I have to question why this is necessary. Asking people to opt-in to any cookies just creates a massive nuisance for everyone. While the supporters of such rules believe that this increases knowledge and transparency, there's little evidence that this is the case. Instead, as some earlier studies have suggested, it seems to just increase the nuisance factor. People who are regularly presented with a popup asking them for permission to proceed just get into the habit of clicking to make the box go away, rather than understanding what they're clicking. That's because when they go to visit a site, they don't care about the cookies and don't want to be interrupted.
I'm sure the politicians supporting this move think they're doing something good, but it really does the exact opposite of what they really want. It won't make people care any more about their privacy. It'll just make them more annoyed about the overall process. The way to make people more concerned about their privacy is to educate them and make it their choice in how they deal with these things. There are already plenty of easy-to-use tools on the market for users to set up preferences via browser extensions. Mandating rules for websites is just going to cause a hassle for everyone else.