EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants • Hacker News Board

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#31

Post by speedgoose » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #26

speedgoose wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it's very easy to see, the companies are not hiding it at all. They send the data to third-party trackers straight from their website or application.

Disqus loads a million external resources That’s so stupid, why not just take your OWN cookie and use it in the backend to send to all these resources, proxying through your own server or having a CNAME for theirs under your domain?

I guess it's often much simpler and cheaper to not try to hide it.

The CNAME practice is becoming more and more common. See https://blog.apnic.net/2020/08/04/characterizing-cname-cloak... or https://medium.com/nextdns/cname-cloaking-the-dangerous-disg... or https://www.laquadrature.net/2020/10/05/le-deguisement-des-t...

I think proxying or doing it server side only will be implemented later when these people will be forced to hide to save their shitty business model.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#32

Post by kreeben » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

KDJohnBrown wrote: post #29

What the EU should really do is fine / tax monopolists like Google and Facebook into submission then invest that money into the EU-based startup ecosystem.

Targeting taxes directly towards specific companies seems overly aggressive. I hope they will find and implement more generic rules to achieve what it is they want to achieve which, if I'm not completely mistaken, is to protect me from invasive tracking.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#33

Post by dominotw » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

KDJohnBrown wrote: post #29

What the EU should really do is fine / tax monopolists like Google and Facebook into submission then invest that money into the EU-based startup ecosystem.

can't google just threaten to pull out like they did in australia?

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#34

Post by mrtksn » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #7

yulaow wrote: post #5

At this point honestly I just wish for a general ban on tracking ads of any kind. Just give me good old contextual ads and remove some MBs of js, with the only purpose of tracking me, from most websites of the internet.

How would the EU enforce such a ban? They actually need to prove company X was tracking its users if it goes to court.

Turkey successfully made US tech giants comply to Turkish law by banning purchase of ads from non compliant ones and threatening with accumulating fines and progressive bandwidth throttling.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#35

Post by fauigerzigerk » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

apples_oranges wrote: post #15

People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly. I am baffled about the crazy amount of debate and technical solutions to a problem that was solved the moment Cookies were invented. In the 1990s I suppose.

That would mean getting every single cookie banner, insterstitial ad, newsletter begging screen, country selection, TOS confirmation, etc, on every single visit.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#36

Post by inetknght » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

apples_oranges wrote: post #22

kzrdude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Seriously) I don't want to be logged out.

why not, your browser or operating system remembers all your logins for you

Automatic logins are easily automatable to steal data from my device, me, and the people around me.

I want to be asked every time a service wants to know who's using it from my device. I want to have the option to immediately decline authorization before any information about me or my device is sent.

I want to have the option to say "no, I don't want this service to know it's me". I also want the option to say "I am " even if really I am not .

Not giving me that option is a disrespect of me as a user.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#37

Post by simion314 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

apples_oranges wrote: post #15

People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly. I am baffled about the crazy amount of debate and technical solutions to a problem that was solved the moment Cookies were invented. In the 1990s I suppose.

>People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly.

Do you think you are clever? Like this ad trackers can't just switch to use local storage, fingerprinting or other methods to go around your clever solution? You can't use tech to solve this, Google, Facebook and the others will tech around your fix.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#38

Post by GradientAssent » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

jka wrote: post #20

yulaow wrote: post #5

At this point honestly I just wish for a general ban on tracking ads of any kind. Just give me good old contextual ads and remove some MBs of js, with the only purpose of tracking me, from most websites of the internet.

Ads could be placed into a search engine, and user agents could choose to request relevant ads based on the page they are viewing (the context) and/or the current user's profile (if the user opts-in to their profile being included). Advertisers would compete within that search engine to have the most relevant and accurate product and service offerings to match demand, and would pay the search engine provider for the…

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business?

It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#39

Post by badjeans » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #35

apples_oranges wrote: post #15

People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly. I am baffled about the crazy amount of debate and technical solutions to a problem that was solved the moment Cookies were invented. In the 1990s I suppose.

That would mean getting every single cookie banner, insterstitial ad, newsletter begging screen, country selection, TOS confirmation, etc, on every single visit.

A lot of those can be blocked with e.g. ublock (the "annoyances" filters, not on by default)

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#40

Post by lmkg » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:13 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #21

On related news: Just two days ago the EU ePrivacy regulation took the first hurdle in Brussels. This will most likely bring some changes to the whole consent drama. I'm not good at reading legalese and there seem to be no commentary for the current version[1] yet. What I understand is that they "encourage" browsers to implement "whitelists" (their choice of word, not mine) as a solution to "end-users [..] overloaded…

I would hone in on pages 27 & 28 in that document. In particular, this quote:

> Cookies can also be a legitimate and useful tool, for example, in assessing the effectiveness of a delivered information society service, for example of website design and advertising or by helping to measure the numbers of end-users visiting a website, certain pages of a website or the number of end-users of an application. This is not the case, however, regarding cookies and similar identifiers used to determine the nature of who is using the site, which always require the consent of the end-user.

It is, of course, legalese. But they seem to be drawing a distinction between analytics and tracking. Counting distinct users seems to be acceptable without consent; profiling users does not.