[Karunamon]

>I want advertising. It tells me about things I might like.

I hate advertising. Usually the ads are irrelevant and for things I do not and would not ever want, are often scammy, sometimes they carry malware, often get in the way of me retrieving the information I went to a site to see..

I bet if I counted every time I clicked on an advertisement in the last decade, that number would be less than 20.

That said, I agree completely the "tracking" worries are absurd and more borne out of FUD than any concrete privacy issue.

>Look also at the recent EU cookie laws, and how ridiculous and needlessly cumbersome they have made websites that have addopted it.

Due to shoddy implementation of a shoddy law - that does not reflect whatsoever on the concept. And cumbersome? Really? Could you point to an example site?

[dpark]

> And cumbersome? Really? Could you point to an example site?

It's definitely cumbersome. I've hit a bunch of sites recently that threw up an interstitial requiring me to "opt in" to cookies. This is obnoxious, and I go through the same thing on every device. It's not that one site doing it is especially cumbersome. It's the aggregate behavior.

I didn't realize that a new EU law was responsible for this until I read mibbitier's comment, though.

[mibbitier]

The worst implementations "drop down" a message at the top of the page to tell me they're using cookies. This invariably happens just as I'm clicking on a link. The link moves, and I click on some link I didn't want to click on.

There are no words strong enough to describe how shitty that is, and it's incredibly common, on big, widely used websites.

[PJones]

Recently became required by the EU for all websites to notify users of cookies, so don't expect the notifications to go away. Better implementations don't move content around the page though.

[mibbitier]

I expect us (UK) to withdraw from the EU in the next few years, so hopefully it'll become irrelevant.