Credit is due Google for announcing a privacy-improving change to its cookie policy. According to Peter Fleischer, writing on the official Google blog, Google will be altering its cookie-setting practices to give its cookies an expiration date of two years from the time they’re set. The previous cookie practice was to give all cookies persistence until 2038.
Google’s change doesn’t tame the cookie monster, of course. A cookie re-issued every ≤2 years until 2038 and beyond has the same tracking power as a cookie expiring 31 years hence. But rare users of Google rightly should be “forgotten” by Google in two years.
As important as the substance of the new cookie policy, Google is talking about their information practices and the effects their practices have on privacy. What other company does even that?
It remains with you to tame the cookie monster, if that’s what you care to do. Your web browser provides you the ability to control them, which gives you the responsibility to do so. I control mine.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.