Eli and Opt -In
Eli Robillard wrote a bit about "Common Sense and Opt-In" in his blog for May 8.
Everyone is familiar with the little checkboxes on websites with an option to "remember me". These also exist to "remember my settings", etc. This reminds me of what Cooper referred to as both protecting the user from himself, and also adding an extra unnecessary step for the user.
Eli maintains that we should make this seamless via the use of cookies, and instead of having users opt in that your code should seamlessly handle cookies instead. He goes a step further and says that sites should educate the users about cookies as well. Here is where I disagree. Users are not going to be bothered to take the time to read that sort of thing. I think that yes, we should get rid of the opt-in checkbox, but do allow an opt-out one. Since experienced users already know about cookies, and might already have privacy concerns, they will understand the concept and appreciate the option.
I guess it all depends on who your intended audience is. If you are designing for developers or techno-savvy people, they will fully understand when they return, that their information was saved in a cookie. Average and novice users on the other hand, don’t need to know this. All they know is "hey lookie I was here yesterday and the site remembered me! How cool!"