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Who wants to be tracked?

quantable.com

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Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#191

Post by todd8 »

dylan604 wrote: post #187
todd8 wrote: post #177

My spouse will sometimes mention in conversation with others that I invented the cookie. This always puts me on the spot, and I have to enter into a long explanation of the what and the why of cookies least they believe that I some sort of evil software hacker. (Now for a short explanation so that HN readers don’t think that I’m an evil hacker: I invented them, with the help of a colleague, while at IBM where we were…

Great, so when time travel becomes a thing, I'll add you to the list of people to have a chat with about needing to envision longer term visions for how nefarious people can be. I love that at one point in a not so distant galaxy, er time, that there was a thing of innocence. Now, that innocence can no longer be tolerated and every new thing must have more time invested on how the new thing can be abused rather than…

Really? I didn't invent it for browsers, I invented it for distributed file systems before the "World Wide Web" had even been invented. You might as well have a talk with William Shockley or Vint Cerf.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#192

Post by mazlix »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #12

Better question here is, why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it. Block third party cookies by default, delete other cookies on the last tab or window closed and prompt user to save cookies on a form submit ("do not delete cookies for this domain when leaving" type of prompt, for pages with logins, settings, etc). Also remove features that make easy fingerprintin…

Lynx browser does this, for every website I choose which Set-Cookie headers I want to respect and which to ignore.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#193

Post by Rygian »

denton-scratch wrote: post #186
yason wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be wrong but I think the EU regulation that forced these cookie acceptance forms―I can't remember if it was GDPR or some earlier directive―specifically required that the consent submission may not be automated so that the browser can be configured to accept everything. It may have had good intentions as entities such as Microsoft would just set their browsers to default to accept all cookies anyway and a marg…

> the EU regulation that forced these cookie acceptance forms No such regulation has ever existed in the EU.

That's correct.

The regulation is about providing consent to process personal data.

Many people fail to see the difference.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#194

Post by hutzlibu »

todd8 wrote: post #191
dylan604 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, so when time travel becomes a thing, I'll add you to the list of people to have a chat with about needing to envision longer term visions for how nefarious people can be. I love that at one point in a not so distant galaxy, er time, that there was a thing of innocence. Now, that innocence can no longer be tolerated and every new thing must have more time invested on how the new thing can be abused rather than…

Really? I didn't invent it for browsers, I invented it for distributed file systems before the "World Wide Web" had even been invented. You might as well have a talk with William Shockley or Vint Cerf.

Somewhat probably, don't take it serious. You did good.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#195

Post by Rygian »

mtkhaos wrote: post #131
TekMol wrote: post #15

I have switched one of my sites to cookieless analytics and it is bad for everybody. I can't even say how many users this site has now. It could be the same user coming back over and over. Or many users. How would I know. Yes, I could track a ton of stats about every pageview like user agent, screen resolution etc and then try to stitch it back together. Trying to figure out how many different users there are. But th…

Local Storage? Cookies are just a Dumb Implementation and only persist due to advertising.

GDPR is about tracking, not about cookies.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#196

Post by todd8 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #194
todd8 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I didn't invent it for browsers, I invented it for distributed file systems before the "World Wide Web" had even been invented. You might as well have a talk with William Shockley or Vint Cerf.

Somewhat probably, don't take it serious. You did good.

Thanks...I'm think I'm too sensitive about it since this comes up every f'ing time.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#197

Post by jeremyjh »

jefftk wrote: post #164
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #12

Better question here is, why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it. Block third party cookies by default, delete other cookies on the last tab or window closed and prompt user to save cookies on a form submit ("do not delete cookies for this domain when leaving" type of prompt, for pages with logins, settings, etc). Also remove features that make easy fingerprintin…

1. Your proposal is not enough for EU privacy law, so you'd still see banners. First-party tracking is still tracking and you still need a banner if you're going to store any data on the client that is not "strictly necessary" for the user's request. 2. Your proposal gives a pretty crummy experience in cases where users do expect the site to store data on the client longer. For logins you're popping up a confusing ba…

No consent is required to store cookies required for the site to function. Login cookies, shopping carts etc are fine. The only reason websites display these banners is because they want to track you, and they rely upon misunderstandings like you are propagating to whitewash the request.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#198

Post by dspillett »

anticristi wrote: post #184

We use zero cookies on our website, so we have no consent banner. But people got so used to seeing "cookie consent banners", that we are considering introducing a "no cookies here" banner.

For some cookies, basic session management for instance, you don't need a banner anyway. Many sites want people to believe it is needed for necessary cookies, but that is either because they want the public to be against all the warnings (so they can go back to silently tracking everything) or because they have a very skewed idea of what necessary means in this context.

In most cases sites could just use necessary tracking without permission but seek explicit opt-in for the rest. They won't do it that way of course because most people won't op-in unless nagged or conned into doing so.

(the other reason for consent questions where they are not really needed is people playing safe lest they have to defend the lack of a consent form in legal court or the court of public outrage)

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#199

Post by hiatus »

Gys wrote: post #109
hourago wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they also want everything for free. Maybe people just goes to the cheaper option available because increasing inequality has left millions with no disposable income. This is the same logic by which people prefers cheap furniture instead of high quality one. It is not a preference for cheap but it is just what they can afford, if they had more money most people will get the higher quality version and pay the…

> Maybe people just goes to the cheaper option available because increasing inequality has left millions with no disposable income. No disposable income would mean not being able to spend money, meaning never buy anything. If this was true the ad industry would very quickly run bankrupt. And yet the revenues of Google and Facebook indicate otherwise.

Even without disposable income, advertising can still lead to people choosing alternatives and directing their spend someplace else, so your conclusion does not follow. If someone is maxing out their income they can still be advertised to to get them to switch consumption habits.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#200

Post by jeremyjh »

Rygian wrote: post #193
denton-scratch wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the EU regulation that forced these cookie acceptance forms No such regulation has ever existed in the EU.

That's correct. The regulation is about providing consent to process personal data. Many people fail to see the difference.

> Many people fail to see the difference.

By design. The prompt wants you to think the site only needs your permission to store necessary cookies such as for authentication, when in fact it is always because they want to track you and sell the tracking data.

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