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Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

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Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#151

Post by CaptainZapp »

danudey wrote: post #86
nottorp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they have to do is stop tracking us and only use login cookies if i log in. Simple enough. Any other cookies are not "table stakes".

Website analytics can be incredibly useful for designers and developers; giving those up would be a huge hit to a lot of companies, large and small, so it's understandable that they're not going to do so. Random example from more than a decade ago: I worked at an online retailer, and we did a nice redesign of our cart page. Looked great, much more readable, but we started losing sales. Did people hate the redesign? I…

> but without those analytics we would have had no idea why we lost those sales

That's not really my problem as a (viciously tracked) user. Now, is it?

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#152

Post by Deestan »

0xfedbee wrote: post #52
telmo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal experience, people who hate the GDPR are typically not EU citizens. I am an EU citizen and I strongly approve of GDPR. Is it perfect? No. Is it a step in the right direction? Yes.

Do you also approve of surveillance states that a lot of EU countries are? Do you approve of push to end encrypted messaging? Do you approve of impossibility of getting an anonymous SIM card?

Whataboutism is detrimental to discussion.

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#153

Post by slotrans »

sublinear wrote: post #105
probably_wrong wrote: post #41

Disclaimer: I actually click through the "do not consent" procedure, which tells a lot about what I'm about to say. When the EU regulation came up, I was shocked that a single article was being shared with 100+ "partners". I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad. At least now I get the choice to opt-out. Sidenote: Google got fined for that pop-up because it should have a "do not accept" option [1]. Compa…

> Companies know they don't need those pop-ups. They are putting them there to anger you and demand for things to go back. You're giving these companies much more credit than they deserve. They're just going through the motions in an attempt to avoid lawsuits, but clearly not even Google can get it right 100%. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Yeah, it's this.

Having worked for a number of companies implementing these measures, there's no malicious intent, they are rolling their eyes the whole time. It's just a box they need to tick. Everyone wishes it would just go away.

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#154

Post by cameronh90 »

jdietrich wrote: post #96
cameronh90 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyone who actually consents for any other reason than the consent button being either to click than more options? Would we accept this kind of behavioural tracking in real life? Of course not. Just ban tracking for advertising purposes entirely, or at the last least mandate that sites respect the do not track header and require browser manufacturers implement it as opt-in. The cookie pop-up is a dumb law.

>Is there anyone who actually consents for any other reason than the consent button being either to click than more options? If the "reject all" button isn't as easy to click as the "accept all" button, then the popup is illegal. The big players have all been forced into compliance, but there's a long tail of publishers who are chancing their arm on the assumption that the regulators don't have the resources to deal…

> then the popup is illegal

That's what they say, but even government websites do the same thing.

Anyway, my point wasn't so much about the pop up itself but rather that if you make it easy to reject, then everyone will reject. So what's the point of allowing it? It's like having a cashier asking everyone "would you like to get kicked in the balls?" with the hope that someone misunderstands, and then they get to kick them in the balls.

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#155

Post by slotrans »

Kovah wrote: post #21

Instead of hating the EU, how about directing your hate towards the bad players of the web? Cookie banners are not the fault of the EU, but the fault of companies disrespecting privacy rights and pushing data collection, ads and all possible shady growth hacking strategies towards the user. I am glad that a government body actually made this possible and made visible how horrible the internet is.

Cookie banners are absolutely the fault of the EU.

Users have always been in control of whether they accept cookies. There have been settings in your browser since (at least) Netscape 3.0. It's only because of dumb EU laws that cookie control has been pushed up into "user space" with these idiotic banners that no one reads.

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#156

Post by danudey »

danhau wrote: post #36
ktosobcy wrote: post #18

But you know that the problem are we operators - right? There could be browser configuration for the cookie consent popup (accept, essential, reject all) that websites could follow but now - they prefer to be obnoxious about it hoping that everyone will click "allow" pit of boredom (not to mention that at the beginning it was only visible option and reject was hidden, which was illegal)...

This. It boggles the mind that browser vendors (and standards committee) haven‘t come up with a preferences page for cookie consent. Expose that through JS and/or send it to the server via a HTTP header.

The companies who actually use these cookies don't want that, because everyone would just turn everything off forever. It would probably just kill off tons of analytics companies overnight.

(I wouldn't lament the loss of invasive analytics, but the job losses would be saddening)

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#157

Post by pasc1878 »

m00dy wrote: post #130
pasc1878 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consent banners you complain about are not due to GDPR it is a different law plus a compliant website makes it as easy to reject cookies as it does to accept them.

I can feel that you are from EU. Just because the way you defend your arguments sounds so european. But, let me whisper it to your ears, this thing is shit bro. Literally, I'm spending hours looking at screen and this consent banner pops out almost every minute...I keep my right to take this to the court if I'm diagnosed with schizophrenia or whatever.

I am not in Europe - I am British and we left.

The popu repeating is definitely not due to EU legislation. You should only get it once and it shjould offer you the choice to accept all or reject all or optionally the complex choosing.

If it pops up every minute it is the website that is doing it wrong sue them.

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#158

Post by ElectricalUnion »

skydhash wrote: post #120
madeofpalk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analytics can be useful! They're not 'table stakes' though. The website will continue to work without them. If you want analytics, just get consent for be tracked.

Doesn't HTTP has an header [0] for this? The user can opt easily in and out. I've just read the specs and find that it's being deprecated. Why? It may not be granular, but I believe anyone opting out of telemetry also does not want marketing tracking. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...

It used to have several headers about site privacy compliance [1].

But because one really big early intenet player disrespected it [2] it became mostly useless.

[1] https://www.w3.org/P3P/

> What is P3P?

> The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) enables Websites to express their privacy practices in a standard format that can be retrieved automatically and interpreted easily by user agents. P3P user agents will allow users to be informed of site practices (in both machine- and human-readable formats) and to automate decision-making based on these practices when appropriate. Thus users need not read the privacy policies at every site they visit.

> Why is P3P useful?

> P3P uses machine readable descriptions to describe the collection and use of data. Sites implementing such policies make their practises explicit and thus open them to public scrutiny. Browsers can help the user to understand those privacy practises with smart interfaces. Most importantly, Browsers can this way develop a predictable behavior when blocking content like cookies thus giving a real incentive to eCommerce sites to behave in a privacy friendly way. This avoids the current scattering of cookie-blocking behaviors based on individual heuristics imagined by the implementer of the blocking tool which will make the creation of stateful services on the web a pain because the state-retrievel will be unpredictable.

[2] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/151657?hl=en

> P3P and Google's cookies

> In some situations, the cookies we use to secure and authenticate your Google Account and store your preferences may be served from a different domain than the website you're visiting. This may happen, for example, if you visit websites with Google +1 buttons.

> Some browsers require third party cookies to use the P3P protocol to state their privacy practices. However, the P3P protocol was not designed with situations like these in mind. As a result, we've inserted a link into our cookies that directs users to a page where they can learn more about the privacy practices associated with these cookies.

Re: Sigh, this is what browsing the web in the EU looks like nowadays (2021)

#159

Post by PrimeMcFly »

Those cookie consent banners have to be one of the most obnoxious things to affect the web in recent history, only outmeasured by how useless and pointless they are.

Consent-O-Matic helps a lot with not having to see this nonsense though.

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