Friday 2 March 2012

Busy biting bits out of cookies

I am painfully aware I haven’t written any blogs or articles for a few months. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly I’ve been busy getting married and skiving off to New Zealand. Secondly I’ve been very busy promoting the new book so the idea of writing more rubbish doesn’t really appeal. Thirdly I’ve been even busier doing my actual job of designing and building websites for our wonderful customers and haven’t had time to write what’s on my mind – not that most of what is on my mind is suitable for print anyway.

Of course I’m not the only one who has been busy. Google and Facebook have continued to busy themselves with their plans for world domination and their vocal antagonists have been equally busy trying to convince everyone that these evil companies are invading our privacy by using internet mind probes to read our thoughts and violate our human rights.

On the subject of privacy, I was forwarded an email today reminding me about changes to privacy laws surrounding website cookies. As wonderful and tasty as this sounds, it’s really rather annoying. Some twat somewhere has decided that all websites are evil and have been built for the sole purpose of spying on us. As a result, we are now supposed to inform users when a cookie is placed on their computer, how it’s placed there, why it’s placed there and whether or not it is going to suck their life-force out of them and kill their families.

So how are we supposed to do this? Well it turns out we need to add privacy notices to all websites or make additions to existing privacy policies explaining this pointless and nonsensical addition just to satisfy some pen-pushing bureaucrat with small genitalia. Or, to put it another way, it looks like I’m going to be doing a lot more writing over the next few months.