Then ask the users from which page they came from, I'm sure they'll be happy to do that so that they can know about those great products.

Nooo! Pleasee don't! It will be like these useless cookie warnings in EU all over www. I voluntary enable this path info if you spare me more popups.

Don't worry, the cookie warnings (actually third-party tracking warnings) will soon (May) become not useless at all.

From May on sites have to offer yes/no, they may only track you if you choose yes, and if you choose no they may not ask again, and may not refuse access either.

Which is what was originally intended all this time, and which all good websites offered anyway.

I'm very curious about this. How will you keep track of a user who has opted out without using a cookie? That's my understanding of the issues - websites keep asking not because they think they can browbeat you into accepting cookies, but because they can't tell the difference between a user who has opted out of cookies and a first time user.

There was never a blanket prohibition against cookies, that was a misconception (pushed purposefully by some, I suspect). Cookies which are "strictly necessary" in order to provide the service don't need to be approved. A cookie to remember that you don't want unnecessary cookies seems to fall well under that exception.

If I were drafting the regulations (fortunately I have neither the legal nor technical expertise), I'd make it legal to store without permission a cookie containing only a specific string defined by the regulation, e.g. “optout” or “0”, meaning “this user has seen the question and opted out; don't bother them again”. The regulations would have to ensure that the cookie's timestamps are suitably generic to prevent fingerprinting — perhaps you can store a date but not a time.

Would something like that work?

(Edit: Ah, apparently this sort of thing is already allowed, according to comments I didn't read before writing this. Sensible legislators.)

They could use local storage? As local storage isn't sent to the server, the server will not know whether the user opted out. (User opt in will be a cookie still.)

Alternatively, the legal definition of tracking cookie can differ from the technical definition of cookie. It wouldn't be the first time...!

The "cookie law" applies to every information that allows identifying the user which is not strictly necessary for the purposes of the service.

Cookie to say "has clicked no"? okay.

Login cookie? okay.

Cookie to track the user? not okay.

Local storage to track the user? not okay.

Tracking the user based on magic? not okay.

"Cookie law" is an informal name, the Directive itself refers generally to "stor[ing] information on the equipment of a user".

I won't argue about these warnings uselesness, but they definitely are a pain in the ass because they require enabling JS, at least temporarily, on sites that otherwise would work perfectly without it to be able to answer to these warnings.

How stupid is that? Privacy at the expense of security?

That's not required. The site could use a redirect to set such a cookie, or could use the DNT header to identify this.

You misunderstood me. It may not be strictly required for sites to use JS to build these warnings. But in practice, today, that's how it works on sites that display them. And it definitely requires the user to have JS enabled to pass these obnoxious pop-ups.

JS is also used for things that are doable with CSS or even HTML only. This isn't the first time.

My tin-foil hat persona suspects it's yet another way to force me to disable the various script and ad-blockers in the guise of protecting users for privacy concerns. But my more realistic side assumes this is just laziness.

I'd rather block popups...

Or just use NoScript.

If I can go through your underpants drawer then I'll know the right kind of underpants to try and sell you. That means it's OK, right?

(Tangent, but I’ve never found this particular example compelling. All that’s in my underwear drawer is underwear... and I don’t find that particularly embarrassing? I think I’m missing some cultural context for it)

In the US, at least, the underwear drawer is a popular place to hide other things ... eg, your illegal drug stash, or the engagement ring you bought, etc. I think there's also subtextual implications of nosing about in your sex life.

It's a mild, nonspecific stand-in for whatever it is that you really don't want people knowing. Whether that's your weird fetish or your embarrassing hobby or the fact that you worked as a pianist in a brothel or whatever.