In the tradition of printed newspapers, most news websites reserve the prime real estate "above the fold" for their biggest headlines. Since late May, however, sites including the Financial Times and the Economist have instead been greeting visitors with a text box warning them that they are being tracked.

The notifications explain to readers that the publications have placed a cookie in their browsers—a bit of code that allows the sites to record what pages they visit. Cookies are hardly unusual: many websites (including Technology Review's) place a half-dozen in visitors' machines. What is unusual is that a website would bother to tell anyone.