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Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

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Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#141

Post by npteljes »

baby wrote: post #116
fsh wrote: post #30

GitHub got rid of their banners in 2020: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ I believe there is also a lot of "cargo culting" where site admins copy what everyone else is doing without understanding the legal background.

That’s what happens when you add regulations to an industry of small players who can’t afford to spend time or money in understanding these things

I think it boils down to how service providers can manage the inconvenience. Since sites can pass the blame to the EU for the cookie things, and they can create a nice shiny button that makes the inconvenience go away in an instant, cookie modals are a good solution. They can perform that they are giving the users options for privacy, and also absolve themselves from the burden of the EU regulation, with one simple click on the Allow all button.

I also think that it users don't mind the inconvenience too much. Complain, yes, but they are not really choosing a website that doesn't have the popup, over a website that does have. And so, businesses have no real incentive to change their ways.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#142

Post by germanier »

ActorNightly wrote: post #134
germanier wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in a heavily fortified home only accessible through a drawbridge but still give a fuck about the privacy of my little city flat that you could probably enter with a heavy kick. Modern society enables miracles.

A more applicable analogy is that you want to have locks on your door to prevent unwanted visitors, but the people that built the building have a master key that they can come in whenever they want, take pictures, install cameras/microphones. But thats ok, because they are the only ones that are collecting data, and they say they are "privacy-first". But thanks for proving the part of "not understanding what privacy…

I have given my landlord a key recently so that he can check the smoke alarm and take the water meter reading while I'm at work. I trust that he didn't install a hidden camera even though nothing could have stopped him apart from "being a decent human being" and "not wanting to commit a crime". Not every protection needs to on a technological level. I'd rather live in a society where we have other tools available than one where I have to take each and every matter into my own hand. This is what my analogy showed.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#143

Post by ActorNightly »

goodpoint wrote: post #132
ActorNightly wrote: post #63

>So stop blaming "the EU" and ask yourself if this is the internet we want. ...Yes, thats exactly the internet "we" want. I don't get why it so hard to accept that people simply dgaf about privacy, and much prefer free products online paid for by ads. And there is nothing wrong with that, because for those that actually care about privacy, there are plenty of tools.

> thats exactly the internet "we" want This is not how civilized society works. Taken individually, people don't care about a million things, yet regulators have to take care of those things on behalf of everybody else. Just because you don't understand the ramifications of something it does not mean nobody else understands it.

Taking care of those things would involve an actual solution that works, which would require people understanding the technical aspects of the problem, which would require those type of people running for office and getting elected.

When that happens, then we can talk about responsible governance in this regard. GDPR was a direct response to Trump campaign shenanigans, as a tool for politicians to capitalize on appearing to be better than US. It had nothing to do with protecting people. If GDPR outlawed 3d party tracking outright, then you would have half an argument.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#144

Post by nonethewiser »

jwildeboer wrote: post #97
olivierduval wrote: post #11

Actually it's a bit more complex (but not much) than what is described: 1st party may need user consent when they will use personal datas for something that is not the intended service (legitimate use). For example, for a shopping cart: cookies are necessary for the service, so no problem. For fraud detection : no problem because it's a legitimate use. But if you start tracking with a user cookie what pages your user…

Toot/thread author here. You are of course right. I couldn't pack all details in those toots. I had to break it down to the absolute basics that are often misunderstood: Not every cookie needs consent. The way this is presented nowadays in these popups is deliberately misleading and trying to move the blame to some anonymous political entity when in reality it simply isn't that way.

Are mastadon posts really called toots or is this a joke?

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#145

Post by 3dfan »

Tarq0n wrote: post #140
3dfan wrote: post #131

The problem with the GDPR is that it is a monster of a legalese text: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... Which nobody understands. Which, depending on how you read it, might make participating on the internet practically impossible. An IP is considered personal data, so in theory you cannot use foreign infrastructure like a CDN. Which certainly makes the internet as we know it impossoble.…

This is way off base. Using PI to fulfill a request someone has made of you is the happy path of GDPR, you just can't retain or reuse that information more than you have 1) a contract or 2) permission or 3) a lawful task For. Having other parties process PI for you is fine as long as it's done under an agreement that binds them to the same terms.

First, no, you cannot reduce a thousands of words long legal document to a few words like you did and say "Easy, this is how it works". Those thousands of words are there for a reason.

Second, good luck, figuring out what you have "a contract, permission or a lawful task" for under the specific circumstances of your site.

Third, good luck, making and understanding an "agreement that binds them" with every provider of every piece of infrastrcuture you use. Good luck doing that for even a single piece of infrastructure.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#146

Post by Myrmornis »

jwildeboer wrote: post #97
olivierduval wrote: post #11

Actually it's a bit more complex (but not much) than what is described: 1st party may need user consent when they will use personal datas for something that is not the intended service (legitimate use). For example, for a shopping cart: cookies are necessary for the service, so no problem. For fraud detection : no problem because it's a legitimate use. But if you start tracking with a user cookie what pages your user…

Toot/thread author here. You are of course right. I couldn't pack all details in those toots. I had to break it down to the absolute basics that are often misunderstood: Not every cookie needs consent. The way this is presented nowadays in these popups is deliberately misleading and trying to move the blame to some anonymous political entity when in reality it simply isn't that way.

Aren't you failing to account for the following?

In theory, website owners could do as GitHub did and remove inessential cookies and get rid of annoying banners: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ But in practice, website owners are worried about breaking laws and aren't experts and just follow what they see everyone else doing, and so put up banners. So in practice, the regulations are indeed the ultimate cause of annoying banners, even if in theory those are avoidable in some cases. The people who introduced the regulations were able to look at the ecosystem of website owners and predict that the consequences of the regulations would be the vandalism of the internet by banners that we've seen over the last few years.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#147

Post by the_gipsy »

fsh wrote: post #30

GitHub got rid of their banners in 2020: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ I believe there is also a lot of "cargo culting" where site admins copy what everyone else is doing without understanding the legal background.

> At GitHub, we want to protect developer privacy, and we find cookie banners quite irritating, so we decided to look for a solution. After a brief search, we found one: just don’t use any non-essential cookies. Pretty simple, really.

Your Product Owner / Team must push against the ever-growing demands of Marketing Team. If the Marketing Team dictates what features Product should build instead of selling your product, then you are doomed. Saying yes to having a cookie banner is sadly an easy bargain for Product Team.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#148

Post by remus »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #117

Both CloudFlare and Jetpack on WordPress insert a tracking cookie as a part of using their service, right? (I may be wrong, things may have changed) For a lot of folks, that's what they have to use, otherwise delivering the page resource-wise isn't viable. Ergo, they need those banner popups to be in compliance, right?

It depends on what the cookies are being used for. If they're "essential for site functionality" (e.g. fraud prevention) then consent is not necessary.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#149

Post by devnullbrain »

illiarian wrote: post #24
4ad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank doesn't use 3rd party cookies, but they have a modal wall you have to click through anyway that explains that they DO NOT use cookies. This is insanity. Their explanation is that users are so accustomed to these cookie walls that a site without one would feel suspicious and unsafe. I very much blame the EU on this, because the EU policy has solved NOTHING, tracking still happens just as before, except now use…

Businesses: want to track users and collect their data with reckless abandon Businesses: implement rampant dark patterns to trick people into accepting tracking and data collection Businesses: flood the internet with inane, obnoxious and blatantly illegal cookie dialogs ... 4ad: I blame the EU (Hint: show me where GDPR says anything about cookies)

Superficially, the banners appeared due to how the law was made and how it's implemented. The noble intention is one thing and the pragmatic reality is another.

It's correct to blame the businesses for creating the banners but also unfair to treat the matter as if the businesses and the EU are on a level playing field. The EU makes laws - it has cheat codes to achieve what it wants.

It's like defensive driving. You may not be at fault if someone crashes into you but you may have had the power to prevent it.

Re: Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways

#150

Post by npteljes »

irusensei wrote: post #29
ge96 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how people can use the internet without an adblocker.

I'm not a fan of attaching third party things that work by reading the contents of what I'm browsing. I'd rather run a DNS based blocker but unfortunately those can't prevent cookie modal monsters.

I see the point in that, but wrt browsing, what counts as a third party? There's a million of points where the browsing data leaks already, running the most trusted adblocker extension doesn't really change that. ISPs track and sell DNS and other metadata, VPNs do god knows what, each website is a third party basically, every website with a Facebook Like button reports your visit to Facebook, most websites are using a large CDN like Cloudflare, some browsers use their own CDN / service to do things like compress images, ...

In the sea of all these things happening, the user is much better served with uBo than going in without it. It gives the mind some peace not seeing all the advertisements, for one.

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