One of the many joys of sum­mer beside a for­est-encir­cled lake is that unlike every moment of every day in “nor­mal” life, your pri­va­cy is respect­ed. The wel­come excep­tion is a chip­munk, who appears, unbid­den and insis­tent, for a hand­out of nuts. When cheek pouch­es are on the point of burst­ing , he/she (gen­der assign­ment is nigh on impos­si­ble with chip­pies) darts off to store them deep in a hid­den den. It’s nature’s equiv­a­lent of what web­sites and online adver­tis­ers do with cookies.

I con­fess I don’t know exact­ly what cook­ies are, or where they are hid­ing in my lap­top, but the insert­ers all pur­port a ver­sion of a pledge to “take your pri­va­cy seriously”.
Appar­ent­ly irony isn’t taught in tech classes.
With bare­ly a com­ma, the advi­so­ry then blithe­ly admits to col­lect­ing “some per­son­al data” such as “…your brows­ing data, IP address­es, and oth­er unique iden­ti­fiers.” But not to wor­ry, it’s done by cook­ies “we absolute­ly need in order to make things work, and oth­ers you can choose in order to opti­mize your expe­ri­ence while using our site and services.”
I accept the neces­si­ty of some to make things work. How­ev­er, opti­mis­ing my expe­ri­ence could start by heed­ing for­ev­er the cook­ie choice I made the first time I clicked “Reject All” for the non-essential.
Maybe the ratio­nale for rep­e­ti­tion is some­where in the site’s “Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy”. I’ll nev­er know, because it’s so long and com­plex I seri­ous­ly doubt any­one with any­thing remote­ly resem­bling a life has read the ensu­ing screeds of fine print from start to fin­ish, or could make sense of it if they did.
The pol­i­cy may also be where they jus­ti­fy embed­ding pri­vate data col­lec­tors in adver­tise­ments, videos, web ban­ners and even the “like” but­ton on Facebook.

Despite their endear­ing appear­ance, chip­munks are fierce defend­ers of their dens and stash of win­ter fod­der, which makes them the antithe­sis of col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion from my com­put­er to sell on to those who breach pri­va­cy online with relent­less efficiency.
The worst data har­vesters are so unscrupu­lous they’re known as “zom­bie cook­ies”, which are buried away from the reg­u­lar kind. Even if you hit Delete All Cook­ies, the zom­bies rise from the dead and rein­stall them­selves. As one web­site devot­ed to help­ing we the hap­less put it mild­ly: “They have gained a rep­u­ta­tion for being noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to remove.”

                HELP IS NOT ON THE WAY 

Google, that most insid­i­ous of out­fits, invad­ed my Inbox to offer me “My AdCen­ter”, which alleged­ly means “…you get to choose the kinds of ads you want to see and which info can be used to per­son­al­ize them.” I’ve been a Google client/user for as long as I’ve owned a com­put­er. If ads can be per­son­alised cour­tesy of cook­ies and what­ev­er oth­er nefar­i­ous means they use, sure­ly they could, or should have, fig­ured out I reflex­ive­ly and con­sis­tent­ly click “Skip ad” as soon as the oppor­tu­ni­ty presents itself.
Claim­ing they’ll respect my “choice” of which ads I want, is as big an insult to my intel­li­gence as offer­ing the ser­vice to any­one and every­one and assum­ing I’ll think of it as “My” ad center.
A cam­paign to “Help Keep Toron­to Clean” that popped up when I opened the New York Times online recent­ly, is an excel­lent exam­ple of how much more acute­ly the cook­ie func­tion is focused on get­ting infor­ma­tion from my com­put­er than on help­ing me in any way, shape or form.
Ontario is big­ger than France and Spain com­bined. Toron­to is at the bot­tom of the province. I’m near­er to the mid­dle and the clos­est I’ve been to Toron­to in decades is the air­port. But if I ever go into the city again,  I promise not to lit­ter the streets. How civic-mind­ed it would be if Google grant­ed my com­put­er the same courtesy.

                     THE OTHER SIDE GETS THE CHOICE

Grant­ed, com­put­ers can and do offer, some use­ful choic­es and fea­tures. The one in my new (to me) car bleeps, chirps, flash­es and even applies the brakes if nec­es­sary to help keep me safe from myself, wildlife and idiots who pro­lif­er­ate on the roads around here.
It’s the first auto­mat­ic I’ve owned in 60 years of dri­ving, so a warn­ing every time I twitch for the clutch and gear lever would be use­ful, but isn’t included.
On the bright side, at least it’s a small piece of per­son­al data the cook­ie mon­sters don’t appear to haven’t found– yet.

How much bet­ter it would be if every­one took the admo­ni­tion of the late, great Mar­lon Bran­do into con­sid­er­a­tion, if not pol­i­cy: “Pri­va­cy is not some­thing that I’m mere­ly enti­tled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.”
The only crea­ture wel­come to infringe on that, is a chipmunk.

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