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Bad, bad cookie!

Published July 25th, 2003 in General

Today my web site became illegal.

Today marks the day of a new Swedish law (article in Swedish) about electronical communication, stating that it is illegal to use cookies on a web site without informing the user that “I” store “information” about you.

Retarded bureaucrats.

I’m sure they’ll be vary happy with us law-abiding citizens if we gather a list of a couple of thousand sites that break this law, so they have some work to do.

Update: Slashdot has a story about it.

3 Comments to “Bad, bad cookie!”  

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  1. 1 Tomas Jul 25th, 2003 at 16:56

    Well, it seems as though that isn’t quite right. I haven’t read the whole legal text, but I’ve skimmed it and read comments from people who, unlike me, are law students.

    It seems that to break the law and get punished for it you need to store personal information in cookies which you do not tell your users about. Basically.

    It is still illegal to not inform one’s users about the use of cookies, but, the law is there to prevent services such as DoubleClick from storing information on unknowing users.

    You won’t get fined or jailed for using session variables, or for remembering the personal info on this form, or for (like me) storing information about what “theme” a user have chosen. That’s not going to happen, not in the free society that is Sweden. You know that.

    Well, nothing’s “basically” about law text, but it seemingly isn’t “out to get” innocent use of cookies, but “bad” use of it. As with all Swedish laws, I suppose.

    I mean, as opposed to the US where a kid can be (and often is) suspended from school (for a very long time) for bringin a play prop to school or other obviously innocent acts.

    So yeah, you and me are breaking the law. And even if we are reported to the authorities for doing so, nothing’s going to happen.

  2. 2 Jesper Aug 4th, 2003 at 16:15

    “It seems that to break the law and get punished for it you need to store personal information in cookies which you do not tell your users about. Basically.”

    Indeed. You have to have a page (linked to from the front page) to describe what cookies are and how they are used on your page. Having it as the front page is NOT necessary, nor is having it all as text on the front page. The information should be able to be accessed during the web site visit, in a nutshell.

  3. 3 cookie Sep 24th, 2003 at 10:33

    Europe is starting to look better and better
    these days.

    Today’s silly deed was the extension of
    security concerns to MSN/EUROPE

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