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People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

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Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#141

Post by stilisstuk »

jonny_eh wrote: post #83
kmeisthax wrote: post #3

>those in charge of the cookie banners really believe that they protect the interests of the user No, they're asking for consent to track because the EU demanded it. The easiest way to avoid having a banner on your site is to... just not have an analytics package on your site. They're aggressive because they don't want their data spigot turned off - hence the work-to-rule nonsense. You should not infer any benevolenc…

> The easiest way to avoid having a banner on your site is to... just not have an analytics package on your site. What if there's back-end only analytics? Does that require a banner?

My understanding; ip adresses are considered personal information. You are allowed to store them in your log for security purposes, without consent (legitimate interest). But if you use that log for analytics, you need consent.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#142

Post by hooby »

I still remember the day, when the browser would show you a pop-up "Allow somesite.com to set a cookie? Yes - No"...

Something like that (with a "remember this choice" checkbox) would be so much more economical, than making every single website implement it individually. When the browser does it, then websites also can't ignore it, cheat it, or use dark patterns to avoid it.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#143

Post by gcthomas »

gzer0 wrote: post #113

I just avoid them altogether. If you go to your uBlock origin plugin settings > filter lists > annoyances > checkmark "fanboy's annoyances", "adguard annoyances", and "uBlock annoyances" Never see cookie banners again.

> If you go to your uBlock origin plugin settings > filter lists > annoyances > checkmark "fanboy's annoyances", "adguard annoyances", and "uBlock annoyances"

This ^^ hits the spot. No need to accept the dark UI patterns (illegal but everywhere) without the pain of going through the options. Works brilliantly.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#144

Post by jokethrowaway »

I couldn't care less if a website is tracking me and Europe can rot in hell for ruining the internet. I just click anything that will get me to the content. Sometimes agree and disagree have the same style and I generally on what's nearer to my mouse. More often than not agree is the easiest option to click.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#145

Post by hedora »

kmeisthax wrote: post #3

>those in charge of the cookie banners really believe that they protect the interests of the user No, they're asking for consent to track because the EU demanded it. The easiest way to avoid having a banner on your site is to... just not have an analytics package on your site. They're aggressive because they don't want their data spigot turned off - hence the work-to-rule nonsense. You should not infer any benevolenc…

At this point, I'd be happy with a service that has my browser send a "do not track" header on each request, and also open a proxy connection to a black hat server each time the page decided to make a request to a known tracking domain.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#146

Post by jokethrowaway »

logicalmonster wrote: post #100
kodah wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I think that despite seemingly good intentions Why do you think they have good intentions? Many of these banners employ some pretty slick dark patterns for you to opt-in to their most critical analytics. One of my favorites is when cookie selection is more than one click from the banner, or it causes a page reload.

I think you're talking about the businesses' motivations and I'm talking about the random EU bureaucrats that imposed the regulations. Despite how skeptical I am of most government interventions, I'd tend to assign benign intentions on the bureaucrats part here as I'd have to guess that they genuinely wanted to do something good. But like any bureaucrats sitting in their ivory towers imposing rules on others, the maj…

I agree there is a greater chance they're more stupid than a brick than they're malicious but I wouldn't exclude the idea that internet gatekeeper like Facebook and Google are bribing them to create extra barrier for newcomers to have independent websites.

The net result of VATMOSS, GDPR and cookie banners was that a ton of small businesses decided not to bother with a website and moved to being FB only or Amazon only.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#147

Post by dredmorbius »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #97

> 4. If you are such an advanced user of cookie-banners then it is natural for you to think they are somewhat useful for you - what are the advantages of this? They're not useful , they're an unwanted annoyance. Nobody wants to fill out a cookie form, they want to browse the site. Delete the cookie banners and the associated tracking completely. Figuring out whatever tortuous process any particular cookie banner uses…

Since you mention "delete the cookie banners and associated tracking completely" without specifying methods:

On browsers which support it, I use uMatrix and uBlock Origin, as well as the Stylus CSS manager.

uBlock Origin has an element remover that will permanently remove elements from a website. It's point-and-click, though you may need to hunt a bit to find the full element responsible for annoyances. (There's also a "zapper", which is temporary only.) I'll typically remove cookie and all other nags, as well as social "link litter", recommendations, Taboola chumboxes, and the like, if my normal adblocking hasn't already addressed these.

Under uMatrix, I'll simply globally deny cookies to the site. Since for most sites the only value I receive from cookies is to remove cookie nags ... this has zarro effect on any site functionality. (For a very small number of sites which I rely on authentication --- of which HN is a very large share --- I of course don't do this.)

Where necessary, tracking hosts / domains are blocked via a DNS-based blocklist.

DNT would of course be the proper way to achieve all of this. The advertisers and surveillance industry have chosen to ignore this. Turnabout is fair play.

Another option, and one I rely on increasingly, is to view the site via alternative intervases such as the Internet Archive or Archive.Today, outline.com, 12ft.io, etc.

On my e-ink tablet, I'll frequently save page as PDF or ePub and read that instead.

(The EInkBro "save to ePub" feature is a bit of brilliant genius, as it permits saving multiple pages to a single document or "book", and is an excellent way of organising reading for a day or week. See: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728)

TL;DR: Nuke banners, block cookies, using browser extensions, or hit the content from an alternate service.

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#148

Post by dane-pgp »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #144

I couldn't care less if a website is tracking me and Europe can rot in hell for ruining the internet. I just click anything that will get me to the content. Sometimes agree and disagree have the same style and I generally on what's nearer to my mouse. More often than not agree is the easiest option to click.

> ruining the internet

You think it's the EU's fault, and not the fault of the companies that are ignoring the "Do Not Track" header and implementing all these Dark Pattern malicious compliance popups instead?

Re: People who press on cookie banners anything except “agree” – why do you do that?

#149

Post by mike-cardwell »

Robotbeat wrote: post #82
seba_dos1 wrote: post #10

The more aggressive and dark-UX the banner is, the more likely I am to spend time figuring out how to reject everything or to just close the tab right away. If it doesn't try to trick me into accepting things, I sometimes actually consider doing that. Why don't I just accept them all? No idea. Out of spite? Principles? Because I have too much time? Because my mind is too eager to get distracted with the popup? The fa…

I do right-click -> inspect element and then delete the pop-up element in the browser source viewer thing on chrome. Sometimes I have to find where it says “overflow” and set it to “overflow: visible” or something like that. Remarkable how often that works.

I do kind of the same in Firefox with ublock origin, making it permanent. "Right click", Block Element". I also added a userContent.css file to my firefox profile, which adds the following style to every page on every website, so I don't have to deal with the overflow shite:

    html, body {
        overflow-y: initial !important;
    }
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