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Credit to Author: Dorri Olds| Date: Fri, 27 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Dorri Olds<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n You are not<\/span> the only person irritated by those pesky cookie permissions boxes. If you click \u201cAccept\u201d by rote, you have no idea what you\u2019re agreeing to. Or perhaps you don\u2019t care? Many users think they have to accept all cookies to access the website, but that\u2019s not always the case. Another option is to manage your cookies, but what does that even mean?<\/p>\n To find out, we spoke to Lou Montulli, the engineer who invented cookies at age 23.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just like everybody else,\u201d says Montulli. \u201cI want that pop-up to go away as soon as possible. The idea of asking people about permissions every single time they go to a website is annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n Every website you visit places cookies on your browser. The purpose of the cookie is to allow a website to recognize a browser. That\u2019s why you can return to a site and be recognized, even if you don\u2019t always log in. It\u2019s why the stuff in your shopping cart is still there the next day, or that article remembers where you stopped reading. You don\u2019t have to \u201cintroduce\u201d yourself every time you visit a site, but is the convenience worth it?<\/p>\n With Montulli\u2019s help, here are some of the most frequently used terms those annoying permissions boxes are asking you about, and what you might want to choose when you see them.<\/p>\n First, let\u2019s explain what some of the types of cookies you\u2019ll see really do:<\/p>\n Montulli refers to the pop-up permissions box as \u201ca really silly idea.\u201d His preference would be a much more efficient and technical solution. For example, a user could choose their cookie preferences once in their browser, and every website they visit would honor that choice, similar to the design of Do Not Track<\/a>. Montulli explained it like this: \u201cSay I want to accept one type of cookie, but not that other cookie, or those cookies, any website could just ask the browser once what any user\u2019s preferences are.\u201d One and done.<\/p>\n That would be better, but what happens when you click \u201cAccept All\u201d\u2014aside from thoughts like, Why does every website keep asking me these questions?<\/em><\/p>\n What many people (especially Americans) may not know is that in 2018, the European Union (EU) passed the General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> (GDPR). And even if they have heard of it, they may not know enough to understand that this law is partially why cookie permission boxes are becoming more prevalent.<\/p>\n As part of GDPR, companies based outside Europe can be hit with enormous fines if they track and analyze EU visitors to their website. In other words, say your company resides in New York, but that company has European visitors and customers, or collects their data. If that\u2019s the case, they can be penalized to the tune of tens of millions in fines if they don\u2019t disclose their data collection and obtain the user\u2019s consent.<\/p>\n Understandably, American companies want to avoid huge fines, which is why US users are seeing more and more of these permission boxes.<\/p>\n The boxes are designed to offer users more control over their data, as the EU law was put into place to protect all data belonging to EU citizens and residents. The confusion within the US market exists because the country doesn\u2019t have similar laws to protect the privacy of its citizens.<\/p>\n