[mgkimsal]

You certainly have the freedom as a user. However, imo, what's been missing since day 1 is any sort of moderately understandable UI for controlling this. Most people understand the basics of bookmarking. If we had some browser UI with 3 or 4 lights (red/green/yellow, etc) that we could click to allow some or all cookies on a per site basis, people would have a sense of control over all this stuff (just like they do bookmarking).

The problem comes in when 'cookies' are intermingled with the word 'privacy', and control over that is typically buried multiple levels away in swathes of technomumbo.

http://gyazo.com/77a1c905b6477b10f6ee71e760075db3.png

^^^^

That's listed in 'under the hood', which non techies would probably shy away from. Even if I go there, I have to 'manage exceptions' and decide whether to 'block third party cookies from bet set' (while at the same time having to ignore exceptions if I want to block third party cookies).

I know this stuff inside and out and it's confusing to me. I understand the geek need for 'low-level controls to tweak everything how I want it!' but for goodness' sake - if we have a few up-front always visible controls in a user-friendly manner, the EU ministers could block cookies all day long, understand how to do it, and understand anyone else could do it too. It would not have the appearance of the black magic it does now.

[waqf]

Well, your example's from Chrome which has the worst options management ever. Quick, is cookie management part of "Basics", "Personal Stuff" or "Under the Hood"? Or maybe it's not in any of those at all, but in the spanner [wrench] icon dropdown? Is there any setting you might want to change for which it's clear which of those categories is most appropriate?

[mgkimsal]

I don't think FF is much better.

IIRC every new point version I'd get seemed to have moved things like cache info and cookie settings to different tabs, and renamed how things were labelled.

In FF5, "tell sites I don't want to be tracked" is a single checkbox under "privacy", but "advanced->network" has "tell me when a site wants to store offline data". Huh? I understand the tech differences, but it's just confusing, and again, hidden. Two or three minor additions to the nav bar allowing you to block or allow cookies would go a long way towards making users feel in control of this type of data.