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Slide 15 of 25
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Slide 15 of 25
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The Code of Fair Information Practices states that each person must have to right to obtain a copy of records about them. It's true that a user always has a copy of their cookies because the cookies are a file that are stored on their computer. Obtaining a copy, however, seems to imply that the copy is readable. Invariably, cookies are not human-understandable, so although the user has a copy, you can't know what data the cookie stores about you.
There are various possible solutions to this. One would be for cookies to be written in clear text. Another would be for each site to provide a way for users to read the cookies by writing an interpreter. Cookies would probably be viewed as less sinister if users could read them as plain text since the content of many cookies would be something like: "User #1234 viewed bb.html on 3-19-98." |