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The problem is cookies are fine and necessary for legitimate functionality, e.g. if you want a persistent shopping basket. But a user or user agent have no way
by goto11 7y ago
The problem is cookies are fine and necessary for legitimate functionality, e.g. if you want a persistent shopping basket. But a user or user agent have no way of knowing what a given cookie is used for. Therefore the legislation requires to warn if cookies are used for non-functional purposes like tracking.
- elric 7y agoYou don't need cookies for a persistent shopping basket. If I want a persistent shopping basket, give me the option to create an account and store my shopping basket for later use. Otherwise, just nuke my shopping basket when my session cookie expires. This is a non-issue. Of course it's not visitors who want persistent shopping baskets. It's sellers. And I don't really care about what they want. On ~100% of the websites I visit, I'm the visitor, not the seller. And given that webshops were a thing before persistent shopping baskets were a thing, I'll wager they can do without.
- goto11 7y agoLogging into an account requires some kind of persistent identifier. And it is not just for shopping carts - you also have a login and cookie here on Hacker News.
- saagarjha 7y agoAnd such a cookie one that is necessary for the site to function, and as such not covered by cookie laws.
- Kiro 7y agoYes, but elric is arguing that even those kind of cookies are unnecessary. Meaning I would have to log in every time I visited Hacker News.
- saagarjha 7y agoI think they said it was unnecessary until you logged in, which was the thing that the Hacker News cookies were being used for?
- goto11 7y agoYeah agreed. I was just replying to elric who argued we shouldn't need cookies at all.
- takeda 7y agoCookies were introduced as a hack to allow sessions. When HTTP/2 was being proposed phk raised this issue and asked why they didn't use this as an opportunity to make real fixes to http warts like this and eliminate cookies[1]. But given that it was pushed by Google, which didn't mind them, this of course was ignored. [1] https://varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html https://varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html
- Kiro 7y agoI run a game where you can play without creating an account, and going back to the game later will take you back to your previous state. How would I manage this without cookies? A lot of people don't want to create an account.
- saagarjha 7y agoCan you ask them if they'd like to save their progress?
- recursive 7y agoSave it where? What if there's no budget for server infrastructre? Say... a hobby project.
- kd5bjo 7y agoA query argument inside a URL that they can bookmark is one option.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- saagarjha 7y agoLocal storage?
- recursive 7y agoI assume that whatever fate befalls cookies will happen to localStorage as well. But maybe not. localStorage is kind of better for this purpose in any case.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 0-O-0 7y agoShouldn't you be using localStorage for that?
- hk__2 7y ago> Of course it's not visitors who want persistent shopping baskets. It's sellers. That’s not so simple. Persistent shopping baskets create problems for sellers e.g. stock changes; price changes; products may become obsolete. Some of them let the cart expire at some point, even down to a couple hours for some (ASOS). As a visitor I do want a persistent cart accross sessions because I may need some time to make (nor not) my purchase. And no, I won’t give you my email just for that.
- contravariant 7y agoIdeally browsers would ask permission for cookies that lasted longer than the current session (where a session lasts until the tab closes). And ideally most webpages wouldn't just keep nagging until people clicked 'always allow'.