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

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221–230 of 265 posts

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

#221

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.

If you don’t accept or decline the cookie pop up I’m pretty sure every website treats it as a “yes you can track me”.

Like those websites that have a banner stating “by using this website you agree to let us track you with cookies”

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imposing rules on others, the majority of their rules have unintended consequences, can be taken advantage of, are usually designed by committees It's a valid critique, so here goes: how would you implement it to avoid those?

Make it part of the browser, not the website.

The "make it part of the browser" argument doesn't work in practice because the GDPR covers the intent and purpose of data collection/processing rather than any specific technical way of collecting or processing said data. Blocking cookies at the browser level doesn't prevent the website from using browser fingerprinting or the information you manually provided (your delivery address to make a purchase for example) in a way you didn't agree with.

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

#223

> 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…

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

For clarity, I was suggesting that site owners eliminate the banners and associated tracking.

That said, I'd certainly second the recommendation for uBlock Origin.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft pulled an Apple and turned DNT into opt-in. Advertisers were very clear that they would only honor DNT if it people were tracked by default. The EU then passed a bill that said you can't collect data unless it's for one of six reasons, one of which is "user consent". This basically mandated opt-in, so everyone went super-aggressive on consent banners (which, BTW, are probably illegal).

> Advertisers were very clear that they would only honor DNT if it people were tracked by default. It's ridiculous that Microsoft's response wasn't to just nuke trackers from space with some kind of adware blocker integration in Edge. This is the equivalent of a mugger saying he'll only honour your "do no mug" sign if the sign defaults to "mug me please" and has to be explicitly changed.

Microsoft is part of "them" now though given their direction since Windows 10, so I find that very unlikely.

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

#225
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone is trying to convey that a plugin should report sites that are detected ignoring DNT to ne'er'do'wells to invite horrible things to happen to them. It's a newbie, be nice. They don't get how it works yet.

Not a newbie. Let 'em use a MiB or so from my legimate browsing session with legitimate IP to perpetrate click fraud or auction fraud or whatever. That'll make it harder for fraud detection to work (the traffic is legitimate, organic traffic after all). If enough people do it, tracking firms that ignore DNT will have garbage datasets or worse. I've worked on systems for detecting this sort of fraud. Systematically in…

You want to let people commit whatever fraud they want using your computer? Knowingly?

How will you defend yourself in court? "I didn't do it, I just let somebody else use my machine, yes I knew they were up to no good that was the point, but to my defense I was shown an ad"?

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

#226
post #166
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile, I often can not even check a box. Rotation sometimes solves the problem. Firefox -noscript always does, if I care that much.

...except for sites that completely stop working when JS is disabled.

Ha! Yes, exactly... it "solves the problem", but not always as desired :^)

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their sheer volume. Drive into a major city in some country where ads are entirely unregulated. There will be billboards everywhere, impossible to take it all in or critically assess it.

as opposed to the internet, where the content is bounded and manageable? I fail to see how you can square such disdain for ads while taking part in an online forum like hackernews

The voting and moderation system on HN essentially distributes the load of managing & sorting all the information across many people, so that overall the workload is manageable. Most of us wouldn't be browsing HN if it was a free-for-all unmoderated cesspool.

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

#228
post #38

No need to click anything nor be tracked across the web! I Don't Care About Cookies [0] combined with Cookie AutoDelete [1] will hide all cookie consent popups, deny permission/not click if possible, and auto-accept if required to use the site. IDCAC alone will hide all popups, but in cases where you must click accept to browse it will do so invisibly & the cookies will linger. CAD solves this problem by purging ever…

Ive been using these two in combination for a little while and found it to be a significant improvement to my web experience. I also use the ekill[0] extension to remove annoying flashing elements or banners that wont go away. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ekill/

I use the I Don't Care About Cookies and Cookie AutoDelete add-ons too.

I also use Behind The Overlay Revival[0] for annoying overlays. I just have to click the toolbar button - not even aim at the elements I want to remove.

That said, ekill's grudge mode looks interesting.

And I use Unstick![1][2] which can get rid of annoying fixed headers and footers that chew into your vertical space.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/behind-the-ov...

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unstickall/

[2] For some reason though, I always have to click it twice to make it work.

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

#229
post #142

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.

I don't remember this and probably should. Did this have a name? What browsers had this behavior?

Internet Explorer 6 (and prior versions presumably).
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