The European Parliament on Tuesday voted to adopt an amendment to the draft directive on electronic data collection and privacy to restrict the use of cookies. If the vote is ratified, Web sites will have to explicitly ask users if they want to accept cookies - a move that the advertising industry says could be damaging to business. Cookies are small pieces of code used mainly by commercial Web sites to track users. They are downloaded to browsers and used to recognize and authenticate users when they return to a Web site so they don't have to log in every time. Source: ZDNet