ClickZ: The Endangered Cookie

Bill author Mary Bono

In the grand congressional tradition, one of the main bills designed to thwart spyware has been written in an overly-broad fashion, preventing legitimate firms from using cookies and otherwise providing useful tracking on their sites. HR 2929, reported here last June, challenges the legality of using any sort of code to capture and store bits of user information.

Cookies have come under attack increasingly, as security firms and anti-spyware advocacy groups lump the bits of data in with egregiously fraudulant application methods to make the internet appear more dangerous.

In the "Bono Bill," no exceptions have been made for, for instance, determining whether or not a site visitor is a paid member, or whether or not he has seen a particular ad before. Even if such exceptions were amended into the bill, the broad limitations would likely preclude much future innovation on the web.