I use Firefox Focus as my primary browser on the phone. I get some kind of thrill agreeing to cookies from sites that are going to disappear from my history in minutes.
I don't care about cookies
41–50 of 193 posts
Re: I don't care about cookies
#42The consent popups you see aren't just about cookies though. They want (and sometimes illegally force) you to consent to processing of your personal information for reasons beyond just providing you with a service (or more commonly just reading an article). Cookies might be one technical means to assist with that, but it's not the only means.
> and sometimes illegally force If they’re complying with the law this is absolute bullshit. You can just hit your browser back button or close the tab/window. Stop using “force” in a way that involves your choice to participate.
OKAY apparently the "freedom" brigade is here. Do you know what the FUCK force means? Is someone being held captive and their digit or voice being manipulated by whatever service? You are not FORCED to visit a fucking website. Jesus fucking christ.
Re: I don't care about cookies
#43The consent popups you see aren't just about cookies though. They want (and sometimes illegally force) you to consent to processing of your personal information for reasons beyond just providing you with a service (or more commonly just reading an article). Cookies might be one technical means to assist with that, but it's not the only means.
> The consent popups you see aren't just about cookies though. I don't care about all the other stuff the popups are about either. The popups are pointless, click-through damage and they serve no purpose. The laws that caused them to exist are equally pointless. There is no measurable benefit to any of this privacy theater and no less tracking is occurring since the advent of all of these pointless popups.
Its failure to make any real difference, together with the total lack of standard around implementation (why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog?) make it truly despicable.
Re: I don't care about cookies
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and sometimes illegally force If they’re complying with the law this is absolute bullshit. You can just hit your browser back button or close the tab/window. Stop using “force” in a way that involves your choice to participate.
OKAY apparently the "freedom" brigade is here. Do you know what the FUCK force means? Is someone being held captive and their digit or voice being manipulated by whatever service? You are not FORCED to visit a fucking website. Jesus fucking christ.
OKAY, the freedom brigade apparently believes they ARE forced to visit websites. Welp, sorry you are enslaved to Bloomberg.com or whatever. I'll help rescue you, just send some alert so I know where to look.
Re: I don't care about cookies
#45I think this would actually massively increase security because you won’t be mindlessly clicking Yes to whatever a website says.
Re: I don't care about cookies
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The consent popups you see aren't just about cookies though. I don't care about all the other stuff the popups are about either. The popups are pointless, click-through damage and they serve no purpose. The laws that caused them to exist are equally pointless. There is no measurable benefit to any of this privacy theater and no less tracking is occurring since the advent of all of these pointless popups.
Its failure to make any real difference, together with the total lack of standard around implementation (why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog?) make it truly despicable.
> why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog?
Because it's not a browser permission. The browser could offer to send a "no" for you, but the site could just go on and track you anyway. It would be like having a permission dialog where clicking "no" just would ask the program kindly not to run with admin permissions.
Now, you might argue that the browser could start blocking cookies, but that would just break useful functionality (i.e. logins) without preventing the abundance of other methods of user tracking (local storage, tracking pixels, link parameters, fingerprints, ...). If you want to go down that route, the most reasonable response on clicking "no" would be to close the browser, really.
Re: I don't care about cookies
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its failure to make any real difference, together with the total lack of standard around implementation (why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog?) make it truly despicable.
> why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog? Because it's not a browser permission. The browser could offer to send a "no" for you, but the site could just go on and track you anyway. It would be like having a permission dialog where clicking "no" just would ask the program kindly not to run with admin permissions. Now, you might argue that the browser could start blocking cookies, but th…
idgi, is it harder for a malicious website to ask you if you accept cross site tracking cookies and then ignore your refusal than it is for them to ignore the same instruction from your browser?
Re: I don't care about cookies
#48The consent popups you see aren't just about cookies though. They want (and sometimes illegally force) you to consent to processing of your personal information for reasons beyond just providing you with a service (or more commonly just reading an article). Cookies might be one technical means to assist with that, but it's not the only means.
This creates an interesting situation if your browser addin auto-squashes those dialogs. I doubt any court of law would rule you gave consent to a dialog that was never displayed to you.
(Of course if their terms are posted somewhere else on their website they might have you there).
Re: I don't care about cookies
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The consent popups you see aren't just about cookies though. I don't care about all the other stuff the popups are about either. The popups are pointless, click-through damage and they serve no purpose. The laws that caused them to exist are equally pointless. There is no measurable benefit to any of this privacy theater and no less tracking is occurring since the advent of all of these pointless popups.
Its failure to make any real difference, together with the total lack of standard around implementation (why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog?) make it truly despicable.
It just goes to show you that government still has a lot of catching up to do when implementing technological law. This is even more apparent when you witness the countless hearings between congress and tech CEOs, which only confirm how much of a joke it is. I have not yet met a single person in tech who thinks all of this "congress drilling Zuck" isn't ultimately just a joke meant for theatre. I mean even Keith Gill took congress for a ride in the GameStop hearing. It's all a joke at this point. These people aren't equipped to deal with these issues.
Re: I don't care about cookies
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why isn’t it treated like every other native browser permission dialog? Because it's not a browser permission. The browser could offer to send a "no" for you, but the site could just go on and track you anyway. It would be like having a permission dialog where clicking "no" just would ask the program kindly not to run with admin permissions. Now, you might argue that the browser could start blocking cookies, but th…
idgi, is it harder for a malicious website to ask you if you accept cross site tracking cookies and then ignore your refusal than it is for them to ignore the same instruction from your browser?
No, this is about boundaries, abstractions and context really. When a browser sets a bound, the website usually has no way to override that, as the browser is above it permission-wise. Similarly, if the OS sets a boundary, the browser looses out, since it's below the OS. Fittingly, when you deny crossing such a boundary, you'd expect it to be denied.
Imagine, for example, if the dialog to allow push notifications for a website would be an UAC window. It would not make sense since a) the OS would ask for something which is clearly contained within the context of the browser and b) the OS has no reasonable [0] way to know whether a notification sent by the browser is on behalf of the denied/allowed website. Similarly, it makes sense to have the prompt for tracking data in the context of the website, since it is the only context in which it can reasonably [0] handle the response. It does change the difficulty or legality of circumvention, yes, but it is a bit less security theater.
At least that's the technical reason. If we're being honest, the discussion never came up, because a) laws are bad for setting technical standards in many ways and b) most site owners prefer to build their own dark patterns to get the user to click accept anyway.
[0] Excluding heuristics, of course, which would just start a game of cat and mouse yet again and would necessarily be flawed.