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New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

dataprotectioncontrol.org

121–130 of 269 posts

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#121
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why avoid cookies entirely? You don't need a cookie banner for cookies essential to the functioning of your site.

You want to avoid cookies entirely so that you don't need a cookie policy and that you don't need a cookie banner. It's also significantly easier to convince a lawyer that you don't need these things if you can prove that there are no cookies whatsoever. And even then they'll be suspicious. It's harder than it looks, just embedding a YouTube video for example already sets third-party cookies. Same with embedding a Tw…

> You want to avoid cookies entirely so that you don't need a cookie policy and that you don't need a cookie banner.

Wrong. Functional cookies are exempt.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#123
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…

Instead of permitting sites to request consent of the user directly, they should be required to request consent via an official EU site. It could work like an authorisation redirect flow. This would standardise the consent UI, and prevent sites from implementing dark patterns.

This is an awful idea.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#124
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…

Visit https://gdpr.eu or https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en "The Official website of the European Union". Look down. Both have cookie banner.

The emperor is naked. The GDPR law is broken.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the banners are malicious compliance." I agree. But I don't think it's because adtech want you to think privacy is shit; I think it's because by compelling you to click, they can run Javascript in the context of a user gesture. I want a plugin that automatically says "OK" to cookie banners. My browser already blocks 3rd-party cookies. It only allows session cookies. Cookie banners are like fire-hydrant CAPTCHAs - th…

“ I want a plugin that automatically says "OK" to cookie banners.” Try “I don’t care about cookies” :) https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

A much better option is Consent-o-Matic, which will reject cookies for you automatically.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but large companies decided to ignore it and simply face the fines if they in some hypothetical future will arrive. This is not the case. The fines are up to 2% of annual global turnover. This scares companies. Moreover, some of the worst offending cookie banners are slowly being replaced by better ones as more and more organizations (such as noyb) file official complaints and companies get fined.

> This is not the case. The fines are up to 2% of annual global turnover. This scares companies. You are wrong. The initial fine is much, much lower and companies have so long to dabble in wilful ignorance that it is at the moment not something that has teeth. Companies are like bullies, they don't respect threats - only harm.

> initial fine is much, much lower and companies have so long to dabble in wilful ignorance

Another diluent: the maximum fine is practically the lesser of 2% and the NPV of business in that European country, or, expansively, in Europe. If you have little business in Europe, it’s cheaper in some cases to simply close shop.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#127
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more information about more people with more depth to the graph is amassed by Big Tech and 3-letter agencies, the more soft power is accrued over large groups of people, economies, processes and even nations. Is there any evidence that Big Tech and Big Government are actually controlling people by tagging them in some database (which no human actually inspects) as being interested in hiking gear and cookie reci…

Companies who track your information, including FAANG get regularly investigated and often fined for violating antitrust laws when they use the data they've gathered to limit or outright kill competition. I find it disingenuous to ask for evidence of some kind of vague "companies controlling people" when it's obvious that they do it on a larger scale all the time. No, companies do not mind control people on an indivi…

> it's not obvious why having the power of putting anything you want in front of billions of people is powerful, then I don't think there's a discussion worth having

There it is. It's not about tracking per se. It's really about control over advertising and information dissemination more broadly.

Motte: preserving user privacy by blocking cookies

Bailey: let's tightly control who can put messages in front of the general public

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You should check out uMatrix to get even more fine grained control over sites. I usually allow images on every page, that's it. Some need CSS, some need iframes, and a small subset of websites I visit are actual webapps that need javascript.

I love uMatrix but development on it has stopped so it won't receive bug fixes and it will probably stop working someday. I don't think I would recommend new users start using it.

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532973

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#129
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

They don't think we want tracking cookies - it just doesn't matter what you want with all the incentives to track.

They do think that we want personalised ads, though, and tracking cookies are just the tech-at-hand that is the least-cost way to do that.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#130
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…

> The annoying and confusing cookie banners are a feature. Not just that, but I’ve never seen a cookie banner that does anything. Cookies get sent down with the page on the initial load. Whenever I’ve opened an inspector to see if cookies get unset by JavaScript in response to my “opting out,” I’ve never seen an effect. The same cookies get sent after I opt out: no change. Has anyone seen a cookie preference banner t…

smaller, local(to me) sites have started to have cookie banners that have an effect. My bank, 1/3 of the bigger news sites here etc...

They all started with a single "agree" button, then went to "agree/disagree" with no effect and are finally starting to come around to a functioning disagree button.

GDPR also helps here, as it defined what identifies an individual and that made most of the tracking PII even when it's all merged by a random ID that stays with the user. The effect is slow, but it's starting to work.

Hopefully the next step will be abandoning cookie banners and only using technically required cookies(don't need conset) and/or non-identifying tracking for aggregate results. This is a massive improvment on UX and actually gives the company more quality data that doesn't identify any single individual.

I'm personally pushing for aggregated tracking in my current company. It's an uphill battle, but one that can be won I think.

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