Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

dataprotectioncontrol.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 269 posts

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#21

Post by yoavm »

juloo wrote: post #8

Why do they still think we want tracking cookies ? The ad industry should prepare for a future with no tracking instead of trying to survive with ever shadier tricks, IMO. This won't work: - browsers other than Chrome will say "no tracking" by default, tracking companies won't like that - websites will ignore this, this will be known and people will be upset even more - more javascript when we want less

The proposal includes no JS at all, and will probably reduce the amount of JS because it replaces current cookie consent modals and banners.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#22

Post by belorn »

worldsayshi wrote: post #14
pornel wrote: post #7

Reminder that we've already had a spec for it. In the 90s! And it even has been implemented in the Internet Explorer: https://www.w3.org/P3P/ It did absolutely nothing for privacy. Google has been sending bogus P3P headers that broke IE's implementation and allowed all cookies. Adtech companies don't want users to have an easy opt-out. They didn't want P3P. They didn't want DNT. They will not want this new spec, unle…

Unless regulators force companies to respect automated protocols.

The GDPR already explicitly forbids 95% of the cookie banners out there, but large companies decided to ignore it and simply face the fines if they in some hypothetical future will arrive. The rest of the industry followed.

Until the law that defined informed consent actually get enforced, a new law can not really fix it unless the regulators start to add the threat of jail time to repeat offenders.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#23

Post by ketzu »

sandstrom wrote: post #16

The thing with ideas like this is that it'll all boil down to one thing: opt-in or opt-out. If it's opt-in, hidden inside browsers settings, effectively no-one will use it (e.g. current cookie blocking settings). If it's opt-out everyone will use it (see e.g. Apple's recent "This app is asking to track you across the internet, do you want to allow it?". Question is, why make it complicated with a spec like this. Bett…

> Better to just agree to block all cookies, or to allow cookies.

But I want some cookies and some I do not. Also I don't want non-cookie based tracking either. Having a binary choice for a subcategory is not very helpful to me.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#24

Post by hnarn »

The most frustrating thing about these cookie banners (more like cookie lightboxes) is that almost none of them are compliant with the rules. Unfortunately I don't have time to find the source right now, but I'm pretty sure I've read official EU guidance docs clearly stating that many "dark patterns" are simply illegal. For example making the "Accept all cookies" button require less effort than only accepting necessary cookies, which almost every page does.

I feel like the current state of cookie consent is completely broken, partly due to the complete lack of enforcement, and having a browser-specific setting that propagates to all pages would be great -- but again you have to think about incentives. If pages are not required to accept these settings, their incentive is to ignore them and to claim that since it's unfortunately not supported "yet" (read "ever"), you still have to wade through the cookie form.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#25

Post by pulse7 »

worldsayshi wrote: post #14
pornel wrote: post #7

Reminder that we've already had a spec for it. In the 90s! And it even has been implemented in the Internet Explorer: https://www.w3.org/P3P/ It did absolutely nothing for privacy. Google has been sending bogus P3P headers that broke IE's implementation and allowed all cookies. Adtech companies don't want users to have an easy opt-out. They didn't want P3P. They didn't want DNT. They will not want this new spec, unle…

Unless regulators force companies to respect automated protocols.

It is time for the governments to take control back and start regulating BigTech: you can not easily opt-out from any data gathering from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, ... If you try it and turn it off on mobile phone and desktop you will constantly have issues and be flooded with messages like "turn on location services", etc. Yesterday I learned that my private calendar on my phone was replicated to Google Calendar >>for many years<< without my knowledge, because the default setting was to save new events into Google Calendar and not a local phone calendar... and I was not asked during setup if I would like that (I have turned off all replication / data sharing / etc.)... this is just crazy... they are basiclly STEALING MY DATA and sending it to the cloud where it is processed without my knowledge... I hope they pay BIG MONEY for these GDPR breaches...

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#26

Post by hibernator149 »

I wonder if this fight over cookies is just a diversion. If we ever get an effective law or tech for cookies, won't the advertisers just shrug and switch to browser fingerprinting? I feel like the only solution is to educate users about AdBlockers and stuff like NoScript.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#27

Post by enriquto »

juloo wrote: post #8

Why do they still think we want tracking cookies ? The ad industry should prepare for a future with no tracking instead of trying to survive with ever shadier tricks, IMO. This won't work: - browsers other than Chrome will say "no tracking" by default, tracking companies won't like that - websites will ignore this, this will be known and people will be upset even more - more javascript when we want less

> more javascript when we want less

notice that if you disable javascript by default most cookie banners disappear and everything becomes better. Then you can enable it per-site if you need something in particular.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#28

Post by jeofken »

juloo wrote: post #8

Why do they still think we want tracking cookies ? The ad industry should prepare for a future with no tracking instead of trying to survive with ever shadier tricks, IMO. This won't work: - browsers other than Chrome will say "no tracking" by default, tracking companies won't like that - websites will ignore this, this will be known and people will be upset even more - more javascript when we want less

When working in that industry, the cope is thinking people are ok with it, because it’s the “price” of free web content, and consumers are choosing it over anything with a paywall.

I hope free software micropayments payperview can be part of the web! Maybe with GNU Taler or Offset by Freedomlayer[0]

[0] https://www.offsetcredit.org/

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#29

Post by lrem »

hnarn wrote: post #24

The most frustrating thing about these cookie banners (more like cookie lightboxes) is that almost none of them are compliant with the rules. Unfortunately I don't have time to find the source right now, but I'm pretty sure I've read official EU guidance docs clearly stating that many "dark patterns" are simply illegal. For example making the "Accept all cookies" button require less effort than only accepting necessa…

Max Schrems now has a foundation you can donate to: https://noyb.eu/en

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#30

Post by ratww »

thepangolino wrote: post #4

Don’t browsers already have a feature to block cookies?

The idea here is not blocking cookies, which are very useful, but rather to bypass the annoying "cookie banners".

Just as with Consent Banners, the website is still responsible for honouring your choices and not tracking you, either via Cookies or any other method.

Post reply on HN