Depending on your point of view, it's either:

• Yet another bit of EU nonsense law wasting everyone's time and money.
• Providing website users (you and me) with more control over our privacy.

It's all connected with the EU 'E-Privacy' directive. Websites will shortly have to obtain consent before they drop a cookie onto a computer. Cookies have been around for ages, and probably all reasonable websites use them.

Homeworkshop seem to be ahead of the game in implementing this check. The site has probably always used cookies and there's no reason not to allow it to continue using cookies.

Unless you have suddenly become paranoid about privacy of course.

Google for "cookie opt-in" if you want more information.

Martin

Have I got this right? Because some bureacrat in Europe has a tizzie-fit about cookies, everyone visiting these sites is going to be forced to respond to a pop-up each and every time the site wants to set a cookie?

Doing this at the site level is nuts. It should properly be done in the browser and configured according to the user's choice (choice: an endangered species). As it is browsers typically give you the options of:

– accepting all cookies

– refusing all cookies

– accepting/refusing third-party cookies

– accepting cookies only from specified sites

I'm not aware of any that curently give the further choice of "ask me" but it doesn't seem it would be that difficult to implement. And if it has to come with "ask me" switched on by default so that the " …. for Dummies" brigade don't actually have to learn about the tools they use, that's OK by me. I'll soon fix that.

Cookies are connected to privacy

In firefox from the top menu tools-options-privacy gets you the cookies option

So I would look for cookie options in a "privacy" or a "security" or the "advanced" tab

Edit

I visited the Homeworkshop site and it gave me the option to load a cookie….. then went into and endless loop, not allowing me in.

If they are important to you then drop them an email telling them their site doesn't work properly

http://www.homeworkshop.org.uk/

Tell them they need to use a pure html option if possible

The flash style pop up box doesn't work properly, even after being clicked

Edited By Ady1 on 27/04/2012 01:01:45

No I smacked small son round the head and told him to take all this EU rubbish off the site.

Back to normal guys.

Note to self : Never let IT geeks have a free hand.

John S.

What's a cookie ?

a cookie is a small, flat, baked treat, usually containing fat, flour, eggs and sugar.

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is a piece of data stored by a website within a browser, and then subsequently sent back to the same website by the browser.^[1] Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember things that a browser had done there in the past, which can include having clicked particular buttons, logging in, or having read pages on that site months or years ago.

Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer^[2], tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used as way to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories — a major privacy concern that prompted European and US law makers to take action.^[3][4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie

That takes the biscuit.

If you want cookie control, and some protection against non-virus type malware, I recomend SPYBOT, which is free and reliable – make sure you download it via the safer-networking website so you don't get spoofed into downloading somethinge else.

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 29/04/2012 18:01:24

I get the same but it was working at 7.30 this morning so probably a server problem.

J

Loading fine using iPad 3 with iOS 6.1.3

Geoff – Cheese on toast in its proper place, coffee following.