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New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

dataprotectioncontrol.org

171–180 of 269 posts

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#171
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…

P3P wasn't great. It's pretty hard to reduce the nuance of how you're proposing to use data down to a handful of fields that will be automatically processed.

I remember spending a silly amount of time trying to come up with a P3P policy that was both accurate and also didn't break sign-on for a single app that used multiple domains.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#172
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. This is also why I never feel "ashamed" when sites ask me to please disable my ad blocker because when I block ads they'll go out of business. Or why I'll always decline even "user respecting" ads on sites. We're fighting the ad and tracking industry here, the internet equivalent of a gang member with a shiv and a length of pipe. I'm not going to fight nicely. I'll deny you any chance and any method I g…

You might show me ads, but not track me, privacy badger stops you from doing that. But if your ads are trying to track me, then privacy badger stops that too.

Unfortunately the ad blockers are not usually able to tell the difference between first-party ads and network ads. In practice both from an ad server.

I think there's actually a great opportunity for someone to create an ad server that only serves first-party ads with no tracking.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information is power. 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. And this ability is currently asymmetric. While Big Tech and Big Govt knows nearly everything about everybody, ordinary citizens are denied data and transparency. And even if the data m…

> 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…

We call it stalking when an individual does it.

It should be, flatly, illegal to collect that sort of data about people without a business need to do so, and illegal to use it for any other purpose, transfer it to any other entity without the same restrictions on its use, et c., when it's needed (like: credit card companies and banks obviously need to know where & when you spend money, but they shouldn't be able to use those data for anything else at all—no aggregating and re-selling to others, no mining spending trends for investment intelligence, no targeting ads at you based on it, none of that).

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#175
post #136
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you’re right that a small minority doesn’t mind being tracked and provided personalised ads, but there are other problems too. Advertising brings poor incentives for businesses, even worse than usual. Engagement is king, and product satisfaction is hardly relevant

We know how small: 4% clicked to opt-in to IDFA tracking in iOS 14. And I suspect a large number of those are people who got confused and clicked on the wrong button.

that’s assuming iOS users are representative of the general public

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#176
post #158
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many opinions online, but there is no authoritative, definitive answer. GDPR was made vague by design "to prevent future exploits". Even lawyers are arguing the details, three years after its introduction. This made GDPR in effect one of the most expensive regulations we had to implement as IT companies. It is also so incredibly punitive that everybody choose to implement it in the most conservative way pos…

Instead of ranting and providing nothing but conjecture about how "expensive" GDPR is (whatever that means), or insinuating that lawyers "arguing" about something proves that legislation is ineffective (that's literally their job), refer to first hand sources and ask constructive questions in good faith about what you don't understand. Here's one example: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ Both first party session cookies and…

Please do not use that website. It presents itself as an authoritative resource, but it is not actually an authoritative resource. Nor, frankly, even a very good one.

Actual first party resource: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/guidance-...

ICO is literally the agency that issues fines for GDPR violations in the UK. They have a lot of explicit guidance about what's OK and what's not.

More detailed guidance on the "strictly necessary" exemption: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/guidance-...

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#177
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But privacy laws are pointless and should be repealed. All this noise about cookie privacy, fingerprinting, FLoC, tracking, etc. --- what are the actual harms that make these things bad? Has anyone in the real world ever experienced a concrete harm arising from interest targeting? Doubtful. The EU privacy regime imposes a heavy regulatory burden in exchange for nothing. Information is a non-rivalrous good. Further li…

Privacy is a human right , and respecting it does not, in any way whatsoever, break the internet.

Specifically, Article 12 of the UDHR states:

"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

Why isn't this Article at the forefront of any and all conversation re: privacy?

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#178
I would rather have a cookie-based approach where the opt-in dialog is clearly laid out via regulation.

At the top of the dialog a "decline"-button and to the right of it an "accept"-button. These buttons toggle all the toggles of the providers listed below those two buttons. You can then manually override each of the listed providers, which may be also grouped by purpose in order to ease selection. No nested dialogs are allowed.

Upon declination, one single cookie must get set, with a specific name, ie 'consent-acknowledge-status', with an expiry date of at least one week, where the consent selection is stored, so that it can be respected in future visits.

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'A "directive" is a legislative act that sets out a goal that all EU countries must achieve. However, it is up to the individual countries to devise their own laws on how to reach these goals.'

And the GDPR is not a directive.

But cookie banners must also adhere to the ePrivacy Directive, which is a directive (as the name implies).

Re: New browser signal could make cookie banners obsolete

#180
post #172
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might show me ads, but not track me, privacy badger stops you from doing that. But if your ads are trying to track me, then privacy badger stops that too.

Unfortunately the ad blockers are not usually able to tell the difference between first-party ads and network ads. In practice both from an ad server. I think there's actually a great opportunity for someone to create an ad server that only serves first-party ads with no tracking.

The Deck was such a thing. It was sort of invite only because once you go first party you have no way to validate the user base so you need to trust the partner. For ads that result in direct sales this can be easy to do though.
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