Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

Post by javajosh » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

orev wrote: post #36

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand your point and I think I agree, except—well, the setting says “disable cookies”. It should do what it says. If the goal is to disable all persistent information, the setting should be called “disable persistent storage”. Of course, I also know why it’s not called that: a lot of people know what cookies are at this point, at least relative to the number who'd understand “persistent storage”. A tog…

“Cookies” is shorthand for “persistent storage” because nobody outside of web developers knows other methods exist. When people, laws, banners, etc. refer to cookies, they mean “any technology that stores information on the client side systems”. Whatever mechanism is used is irrelevant to the meaning/concept.

Post by trasz » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

matyasrichter wrote: post #115

user3939382 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only browser feature we leverage are click events Do the users want their click events fed into an advertising engine? Did you ask them? If you made this opt-in, how many would say, yes, please track my clicks in order to advertise to me? Even if its anonymized/aggregated. A huge amount of advertising is enabled by tracking users against their will, exploiting the fact that many users aren't aware of what's goi…

I'm sorry if this hurts your beliefs, but in what way are aggregated and anonymized data exploitative? Every "offline" store does it. How do you expect businesses to make profits if they can't look at what drives their revenue without bothering every single customer with consent requests?

Post by hombre_fatal » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #17

> All I am using is some innocent localStorage and IndexedDB to persist user settings like the values of the sliders or the chosen color scheme. When you turn off cookies you're telling the browser not to let sites persist information. Otherwise, whatever goals you had in disabling cookies would just be worked around through these other technologies.

Post by iam-TJ » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

janfoeh wrote: post #48

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand your point and I think I agree, except—well, the setting says “disable cookies”. It should do what it says. If the goal is to disable all persistent information, the setting should be called “disable persistent storage”. Of course, I also know why it’s not called that: a lot of people know what cookies are at this point, at least relative to the number who'd understand “persistent storage”. A tog…

How about — Allow websites to store data on your computer [ ] short-term [ ] long-term or permanently Some websites need to store data for some features, or to work it all. Storing data can also enable them to track you. And I'd be inclined to blame the state of the web in general.

  [ ] Cookies - stored locally and sent to web-sites automatically
  [ ] Local Storage - not automatically sent to web-sites

Post by SquareWheel » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

pornel wrote: post #144

ris58h wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. For example, a simple todo-list web-app doesn't need any cookies but stores everything in localStorage. Cookies are made for a server, localStorage for a client.

For regular users "Cookies" is a catch-all term for any persistent identifiers and tracking. The exact API used to persist cookie-equivalent data shouldn't matter. Excluding some tracking methods based on a technicality is a gotcha that erodes users' trust. I think the real issue here is that Google chose to throw errors instead of turning those APIs into no-ops.