A cookie is a small file created and sent by a web server to be stored on your device by your browser.
Cookies were first use by the Prodigy online service in 1989, though the term had not been coined yet. Originally named Trintex after its trio of original partners IBM, Sears and CBS, Prodigy caused a massive outrage when some observant users discovered in their computers bits and pieces of their data in two files: stage.dat and cache.dat.
The public was shocked at the thought that an outsider was writing files to their own computer. Worse, they were doing it surreptitiously!
How attitudes toward privacy and personal property have changed!
Companies have their way with our digital selves, as represented by their treatment of our personal devices as their own espionage outposts.
And people have resigned themselves to the abuse.
Let’s change that.
Cookies are of two types: session cookies and persistent cookies.
A session cookie keeps track of your choices during a visit to a site, providing continuity within your visit before disappearing when you close the browser tab.
A persistent cookie remains in your device after your visit, remembering your preferences, login information, browsing activity and other information, enabling a site to recognize you and personalize its interactions with you. Often, persistent cookies provide information about you to companies other than the owner of the site that placed the cookie.
A Polite Cookie assures you that information about your visit to a site is used only by your permission, and only by parties to whom you have given that permission.
What’s the difference between Polite Cookies and the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive regulations governing cookies?
GDPR and ePrivacy let you make cookie choices. But to what extent is the website required to honor your choices? Is there any requirement beyond a simple cookie statement?
The Osmio Polite Cookies Ordinance is a law that binds the site owner to acknowledge that any information you share in a cookie is your personal intellectual property, that its use is strictly by permission from you, and that no persistent cookies will be placed unless you tell the site’s owner that you want to have a relationship with them.
In addition to, or replacing, other cookie messages and cookies, the following message will appear on a website that uses Polite Cookies:
In addition to, or replacing, other cookie messages and cookies, the following message will appear on a website that uses Polite Cookies:
We acknowledge that information about you, including information in cookies, is Your Personal Intellectual Property. We use a session cookie only to help make this site useful to you. Persistent cookies help us create a relationship with you, if that’s what you want.
A site observing the Polite Cookies protocol will provide two choices:
If you choose “Don’t Remember Me” then the only record of your visit will be anonymous and statistical, letting the site owner know how many visitors were there.
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