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Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

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Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#41

Post by blub »

Asbostos wrote: post #35
blub wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This law aims to protect users from being tracked across multiple websites. There are exceptions in place and most websites would not need to display any message, unless they are in fact helping track their users. If they include services like Google analytics they should absolutely display the message.

It almost sounds like the law is too weak. Despite all the cookie notices I've seen, I never knew they were only asking permission to track me across sites. If that's what the law is for, then perhaps the warnings need to be even more obtrusive to deter sites from doing such tracking.

It probably is. For instance, third-party social plug-in content-sharing might be quite a big loophole (http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm).

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#42

Post by coob »

dom96 wrote: post #38
mstade wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, the requirement of notice could (and should) be pushed on to user agents – not sites. For one, it would help standardize both the user experience of notices – and leave the UX of website specific notices alone – but also it would improve the current state of things where many (most?) sites in the EU simply don't care or know about the legislation. The last thing we need is more cruft sent across the wire.

Couldn't agree more with this. The fact that the cookie law is forced on websites is absolutely idiotic. The browsers know what cookies are being set.

Is it actually enforced? Has anyone been taken to court over it?

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#43

Post by scrollaway »

Kequc wrote: post #13
prodmerc wrote: post #8

Well, this is just funny. Or sad, depending on how you look at it. Personally, I'm annoyed by the cookie messages, but the law is supposed to help people. Blocking (or auto-accepting) them is basically saying we don't give a shit about this law :-)

Cookies are integral to the operation of every modern website. They offer security in the form of features like csrf protection or maintaining login state between visits. There is sufficient protection for cookies in the form of encryption and a laundry list of further details which have been added over the years. There are far larger security related concerns on the web. The cookie warnings are on par with if you ha…

It's a misconception that you need to show this warning if you use cookies. You only need to show it if you use tracking cookies. Which means Google Analytics.

Don't use GA and you don't need to show it. Your login cookies etc and anything "essential to the operation of the website" are all explicitly excluded.

The law is absurd, but it's not braindead.

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#44

Post by vruiz »

blub wrote: post #37
vruiz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I can see that you are not familiar with the law, I don't blame you because nobody is, since it's incredibly vague about when applies and AFAIK nobody has yet been fined. There are hundreds of companies doing wrong things, no doubt. The "millions" are collateral damage.

I am basing my statements on http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm (the chapter EU legislation on cookies). According to this guide, the following cokies are exempt from consent: user-input (forms, shopping carts), authentication (for the session), user-centric security, multimedia player, ui customization, social network for logged in members. Seems quite straightforward and fair.

No it's neither straightforward nor fair. Because it's a whitelist (and a short one), not a blacklist. You can not legislate like that, making potentially illegal any use case that you could have missed or any future use case.

And there is plenty of legitimate usages that are not whitelisted. The most notorious is non-shared traffic analysis. Meaning what basic google-analytics offers and half of the internet uses. There is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing how many unique visitors you got today, and everyone with a website wants to know that.

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#45

Post by dchest »

vruiz wrote: post #11
cornewut wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think law is fine and there should be only a handful of sites in the Internet that would need such warnings. Problem is the abuse of technology to track users.

Even assuming that law was necessary (debatable), the idiotic thing was asking millions of websites to do this, instead of automatically in a handful of browsers. Not to mention absurdities like the fact that you need cookies to remember that the user doesn't want cookies, or even worse: https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/633551359774691328

Thanks, I don't want people who make these stupid laws instead regulate how my browser behaves.

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#46

Post by vruiz »

dchest wrote: post #45
vruiz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even assuming that law was necessary (debatable), the idiotic thing was asking millions of websites to do this, instead of automatically in a handful of browsers. Not to mention absurdities like the fact that you need cookies to remember that the user doesn't want cookies, or even worse: https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/633551359774691328

Thanks, I don't want people who make these stupid laws instead regulate how my browser behaves.

me neither but, assuming that you _had_ to choose, why not? As a user: you get a single standard non-intrusive message you can disable (like remember password). As a website you have one less problem.

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#47

Post by RaleyField »

cornewut wrote: post #6
vruiz wrote: post #2

This is great not just from a user's perspective, also the fact that it exists helps pointing out the stupidity of the law.

I think law is fine and there should be only a handful of sites in the Internet that would need such warnings. Problem is the abuse of technology to track users.

> I think law is fine

I acknowledge some benefits of this law, but I vehemently oppose it from the perspective of freedom of speech. I know it's an american innovation, but I think other countries should adopt the same principle that code (and algorithms/protocols) should be considered protected speech. I don't like this law because it interferes with http protocol by dictating how the protocol should be used. EU should not curtail the speech of W3C and of any users of their protocol. If you created a popular protocol then other entities shouldn't suddenly and arbitrarily start dictating how users of your protocol should now use it.

EU should either create their own version of http or create their own client for http, which would be relatively cheap as they would only have to fork firefox or chromium and add sandboxing bound to domanins. Some infrastructure is already there with sandboxing in the form of incognito/private window, it only needs to be extended so that each domain is automatically in its own sandbox instead of just websites you open in incognito window.

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#48

Post by 4lun »

mstade wrote: post #24
Udo wrote: post #7

This whole thing is ridiculous. While adding these widgets to blocking filters seems like a workable short-term solution, the entire cookie notice scheme is unworkable in the long run. The problem is, this crap will stack up in the future, and none of it will ever get abolished. On some sites, I get a triple-stacked legalese warning banner, and I have to manually close all three of them. Since internet law will only…

Frankly, the requirement of notice could (and should) be pushed on to user agents – not sites. For one, it would help standardize both the user experience of notices – and leave the UX of website specific notices alone – but also it would improve the current state of things where many (most?) sites in the EU simply don't care or know about the legislation. The last thing we need is more cruft sent across the wire.

This is what I like about the lynx text browser[0], on navigating to a new host it prompts you to reject or accept cookies: http://i.imgur.com/GEpYVVs.png

[0] http://lynx.invisible-island.net/

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#49

Post by nly »

gozo wrote: post #40
baby wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to standardize a modern authentication system separate from cookies why? Then ads will use that "new" thing as well. Cookies are enough for authentication.

The point would be that you would have to authenticate before being tracked. Today disabling cookies will break login function of a lot of sites. I'm unfortunately short on time, but you should be able to find a discussion about this around HTTP/2.

I've had third-party cookies disabled for years. It's a simple (partial) solution and really should have been the default over 10 years ago.

Re: Prebake: Block EU Cookie Notices with Adblock

#50

Post by sp332 »

vruiz wrote: post #2

This is great not just from a user's perspective, also the fact that it exists helps pointing out the stupidity of the law.

The law does not require sites to put up giant banners for every page load. As belorn points out, this was caused by the interpretation of nervous lawyers and hasn't ever been tested in court.
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