Clash Of Internet Privacy Policies

from the does-Micrsoft-make-the-final-decisions? dept

The issue of whether or not third-party cookies are good or bad has been discussed many times before (third-party cookies are let companies, like advertisers, track what you do on sites that are not their own). Microsoft put some technology into the latest version of IE to make it more difficult for sites to use third party cookies, unless they have strict privacy policies in place. Overall, this sounds like a good idea, but it's creating plenty of problems according to the NY Times. Anyone who doesn't follow the strict requirements that IE 6.0 uses to assess privacy policies won't be allowed to use cookies - and IE sends the end-user an ominous looking warning message that makes many users think that the site their on has questionable (rather than just incomplete) privacy policies. It also may mean that users get more banner and pop up ads, since the advertising companies can't regulate them with cookies. On the whole, this is likely to encourage sites to put together standardized privacy policies to meet these requirements (which is a good thing). However, that also leaves Microsoft as the arbiter of what is an acceptable privacy policy - and they can change it whenever they want. The real conspiracy theorist suggest that this is another way for Microsoft to drive sites to use Passport for authentication instead of using cookies at all.