Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

blog.tomayac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 231 posts

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#221

Post by account42 »

ajross wrote: post #90
topaz0 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true -- many people think advertising as practiced is abusive in its own right.

"Society as a whole" and "many people" are not the same entities. Again, there was a time when serious discourse about internet privacy focused on abuse potential and how to provide data security guarantees. Now it's just "ads bad", and I think that's a real problem with the discourse. To repeat, you can win fights over privacy (c.f. the GDPR, which while pretty flawed was a real and tangible win for users). You'll n…

> You'll never win a fight over "ads". Ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

Even for cities that do not outright ban it, outdoor advertisement is heavily regulated in many parts of the world. Compare you typical european and asian big city street. Clearly many people do not like ads even without the tracking.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#222

Post by black_puppydog »

dbbk wrote: post #210
ckemere wrote: post #27

I naively assumed from the headline that the author would complain about users blocking cookies. I was very pleasantly surprised to see a post written by someone who appreciates that some users will want to do this and is actively working to support delivering them a useful content experience!

As someone working on a ticketing purchase flow, this is critical... can't exactly just turn people away! I was also surprised about localstorage throwing exceptions.

> can't exactly just turn people away!

Given that many cookie banners still (IMHO illegally, to be verified by courts) give the choices "accept tracking or fuck off" I guess you could. But it behoves you that you would assume it's a stupid idea. :)

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#223

Post by salawat »

galdosdi wrote: post #111
salawat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely unacceptable. No. The solution to "software authors routinely collecting more info than they should" is not "accept the behavior as irredeemable, and just normalize it". The answer is "make ot way more visible to users when it is done, snd make it harder for software authors to do/maintain." Anything else is just a tacit acknowledgement and grant of legitimacy to the behavior in question.

Just the opposite. What this would normalize is app developers no longer be able to depend on location data being accurate, which would destroy the location data sales market by turning it into a market for lemons. What you propose, simply yelling at developers to stop requesting unneeded permissions, would have no useful effect. They won't change. And most customers won't care and will blindly click accept no matter…

No it wouldn't, and it'd be nigh impossible for the handset to make that judgement call. That's not a computable problem except by the User reading the code, understanding it, and toggling the fake data switch on.

Besides which, I don't care if you feed me garbo GPS GLONASS if I've war driven and reverse indexed local wireless nodes to GIS coords. There's more than one way to get at coordinates, and enough hands in the jar in terms of being honest with location data by default that it'd be an uphill battle to fight teach users just how many ways a mobile handset can potentially leak location data.

The problem is that the data is retained at all. Until that data is considered toxic/a liability, there will be no respite from it.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#224

Post by salawat »

powerhour wrote: post #103
salawat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely unacceptable. No. The solution to "software authors routinely collecting more info than they should" is not "accept the behavior as irredeemable, and just normalize it". The answer is "make ot way more visible to users when it is done, snd make it harder for software authors to do/maintain." Anything else is just a tacit acknowledgement and grant of legitimacy to the behavior in question.

Giving app developers bogus data would make it harder to use* and maintain, so that's a clear win, IMO. * use as in use for the intended business purposes, not harder to write the code

The problem is not just app developers. Telcos sell it to.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#225

Post by cyborgx7 »

account42 wrote: post #212
cyborgx7 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The great thing about cookies is that they are a tool, completely in the hand of the user. The site gives you a piece of text and says "show this to me next time if you want me to remember you". And then the browser can choose to continue to use them or not. Such a weird choice to put the onus on the websites to ask whether to give the cookies, rather than the browser to ask whether to save them. I'm a big s…

Cookies might be in the hands of the user but tracking as a whole is not. If cookies become less reliable then there are many other ways, which is why the GDPR requires consent for any tracking not just cookies.

I absolutely agree. I'm arguing for cookies as an inherently consensual form of tracking and legislation to keep all the other ones in check.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#226

Post by ricardobeat »

the_gipsy wrote: post #214
zerocrates wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you define "basic" as not including "this remembers how you had it set last time" then, sure. "In the URL" works for that, sort of, though not if you want it to still work for users that are just re-finding you through Google or typing in your address.

> "this remembers how you had it set last time" That is a session.

And? All desktop and mobile apps are able to persist data. The purpose of disabling cookies was privacy protection, not a 'storing local data is a crime' stance.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#227

Post by matt-attack »

cbsks wrote: post #51
mcv wrote: post #41

I often think that instead of completely blocking cookies, it would be better to accept them and then throw them away. Same with localStorage. Just store it temporarily.

I’ve been using Cookie AutoDelete for that purpose for the last few years. It works flawlessly for me and brings me comfort in knowing that I am only being tracked online by my browser fingerprint and IP. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

Isn’t that essentially what private browsing is? I tend it just always use private mode in safari.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#228

Post by matt-attack »

reset-password wrote: post #67
cbsks wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using Cookie AutoDelete for that purpose for the last few years. It works flawlessly for me and brings me comfort in knowing that I am only being tracked online by my browser fingerprint and IP. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

Came here to mention this. This is is probably the most useful extension for preserving privacy while also not breaking things. Sites can store all the cookies they want now, but a few minutes after the tab goes away it's like we never met. Very nice.

Isn’t that literally what private mode is? It’s a built in feature I thought.

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#229

Post by JohnFen »

account42 wrote: post #220
sysmuird wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in adtech and we manage to do ads in a completely user respecting way within the retail space. We monetize on search traffic without user data, cookies, local storage. The only browser feature we leverage are click events and img tags. Though I appreciate your frustration, your aggression is a little off target. :)

> I’m in adtech and we manage to do ads in a completely user respecting way within the retail space. Ads by definition try to influence the user to do things they would not have don on their own. They cannot ever be user respecting.

Good point. I'm pretty sure he meant "privacy respecting" when he said "user respecting".

Re: Things not available when someone blocks all cookies

#230

Post by fdgdd »

abrookewood wrote: post #191
josefresco wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed"

Yes, this is the way. Only issue is needing to login to everything again on restart/reboot, but it's a small price to pay.

"Manage Exceptions…"
Post reply on HN