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Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

legiscope.com

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Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#281

Post by weberer »

crote wrote: post #262
weberer wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am informed and chose "No" each time. Why do EU lawmakers not allow me to automatically say no? All they have to do is add a line to the law enforcing companies to respect the DNT or GPC header. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track

> Why do EU lawmakers not allow me to automatically say no? What do you mean? There is no law banning companies from honoring a DNT header, companies just choose not to do so. The law already allows it, it just doesn't mandate it.

>What do you mean? ... The law already allows it, it just doesn't mandate it.

That's exactly what I meant by:

>All they have to do is add a line to the law enforcing companies to respect the DNT or GPC header.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#282

Post by kalaksi »

randomdata wrote: post #268
GJim wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You The Point No "cookie banner" is required UNLESS you are using cookies to track me or personally idetify me.... in which case, you must ask my explicit consent to do so. Blame the parasitic adtech industry wanting trade your personal data. Not the EU for providing you with consumer protection.

> Blame the parasitic adtech industry wanting trade your personal data. Blame them for what? We all understand that personal information is the currency that pays for these services. While we may not love that we have to pay (who does?), we accept it as a fair trade. Until governments get their ass in gear to make paying with more favourable currencies viable, that is going to remain, now just with extra clicks. > No…

No, everyone does not understand that and companies were not transparent with what they do with the data, what data they collected and who they shared it with. Not to mention, if you consider it a payment-like transaction, surely you'll want to give consent instead of blindly trusting random websites? These are some of the problems GDPR solves.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#283

Post by GJim »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #39
diggan wrote: post #5

Correct URL: https://legiscope.com/blog/hidden-productivity-drain-cookie-... > This situation calls for an urgent revision of the ePrivacy Directive Shame companies cannot live without tracking cookies, and shame that the blame somehow end up on the regulation, rather than the companies who are the ones who introduce this cookie banner and "massive productivity loss". You know the best way of not having to put up coo…

> You know the best way of not having to care about GDPR? Don't store PII. I hear this a lot. As an American that hosts casual personal websites, I can't help but worry that I'm in violation of the GDPR. For example, my router logs connections for debugging. And my NGinx server maintains server logs for debugging. These contain IP addresses. I'm pretty sure those are considered PII under GDPR. And there are a lot of…

OP should not be downvoted for asking genuine questions and concerns.

This type of downvoting on HN is getting silly and needs to stop.

(And a thanks to those who did respond to OP with the advice he is not in GDPR violation. Frankly, a worrying number of HN readers are clueless about legislation that directly affects them, whether they like it or not.)

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#284

Post by GJim »

scotty79 wrote: post #279
uniqueuid wrote: post #226

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident…

> You cannot have an informed case-by-case decision without spending time. Forcing me to make an informed decision where I don't care about the result is the one of the major ways of wasting my time. If you wanted to create a good law about this you should make it so I only have to make a case-by-case decision if I care about my privacy (as it's currently exploited) and do nothing if I don't.

> Forcing me to make an informed decision where I don't care about the result

The UK and EU have decided _society_ cares, about the dangers due to unregulated sharing of personal data; hence the law requires informed consent to do this.

If _you_ don't care, then that is your prerogative.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#285

Post by kalaksi »

oasisaimlessly wrote: post #233
yakcyll wrote: post #227

The title originally claimed 575M hours spent every year by Europeans on cookie banners. That's 12 seconds on average a day per person. Hardly anything to complain about.

An alternative interpretation: "575M hours spent every year by Europeans" = 850 average human lifespans per year Cookie banners in Europe have an effect vaguely comparable to "wasting" 850 human lives per year.

You can use similar big scary numbers and words for a lot of much worse and more time consuming things.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#286

Post by zelphirkalt »

mpeg wrote: post #232
uniqueuid wrote: post #226

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident…

What I find funny about the whole thing is that the grand majority of companies with cookie banners are not implementing them correctly, and therefore are still in breach of the law. I see constantly banners on sites that set tracking cookies by default, and delete them if you reject them in the banner (or even worse, not delete them at all!) – this is not compliant as the cookies were set before consent was given Al…

And not to forget: Giving consent and rejecting to give consent must take equal effort, otherwise you are not compliant. This is veeeery easy to do. Literally just place 2 equal buttons next to each other ... Basically, all you need to do is not to spend additional effort to F things up. But surprise surprise! Most companies act as too incapable to implement it correctly. I _wonder_ what the reason could be ...

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#287

Post by dspillett »

weinzierl wrote: post #263
mpeg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find funny about the whole thing is that the grand majority of companies with cookie banners are not implementing them correctly, and therefore are still in breach of the law. I see constantly banners on sites that set tracking cookies by default, and delete them if you reject them in the banner (or even worse, not delete them at all!) – this is not compliant as the cookies were set before consent was given Al…

One way to see it is that it's their way of passive-aggressive protest against a law they don't want. Maybe the aim was never to abide by the law, just to pretend and annoy people enough to draw them on your side.

I take an even more cynical view: their intent is far from passive.

They want the end user to be irritated in the extreme. When users complain they'll say “we have to do this, the law says so, look, everyone else is doing the same thing” in the hope that people will support later action to have the privacy protections wound back.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#288

Post by dspillett »

dominicrose wrote: post #264
weinzierl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to see it is that it's their way of passive-aggressive protest against a law they don't want. Maybe the aim was never to abide by the law, just to pretend and annoy people enough to draw them on your side.

A clear example of passive-aggressive protest was from Google, the removal of links to Google maps from the search results. Instead of providing a choice of multiple map providers, they just completely removed the links. To clarify: I'm in Europe (France).

Or Apple's childish hissy-fit, deliberately breaking offline app support in response to an edict about app stores.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#289

Post by dspillett »

scotty79 wrote: post #279
uniqueuid wrote: post #226

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident…

> You cannot have an informed case-by-case decision without spending time. Forcing me to make an informed decision where I don't care about the result is the one of the major ways of wasting my time. If you wanted to create a good law about this you should make it so I only have to make a case-by-case decision if I care about my privacy (as it's currently exploited) and do nothing if I don't.

> Forcing me to make an informed decision where I don't care

The laws do not force that. Informed consent before tracking could be implemented other ways, perhaps even more easily.

The companies choose to force you to make the decision, rather than making it something you could choose to click or choose to ignore, because forcing that increases the chance that people who do care will accidentally opt-in and people who don't care will get irritated and (as is evident in places in this thread) incorrectly blame the law.

The companies make a point of inconveniencing people like you who don't care, so they can weaponise you against those of us who do. The companies are doing this to you, not the law.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#290

Post by dspillett »

bawolff wrote: post #236
uniqueuid wrote: post #226

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident…

> The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. Would there exist any other method of implementing it that would be substantially different? Its hard to imagine. I suppose they could implement it by not having tracking cookies. I think the ideal situation is that people could just set it as a browser preference and be done with…

It is more than about using cookies, despite the regulations being informally called cookie laws, any tracking and storage of PII is covered.

> Would there exist any other method of implementing it that would be substantially different?

A checkbox or button, anywhere on the page, that you can click to opt-in or ignore to not op-in. Once clicked the site/app has consent to track that consent, so the box can stay ticked (or be moved out of the way entirely as long as a way to retract consent is easily available, perhaps via an obvious link in page footers). Done. Informed consent implemented in a way that doesn't irritate any user (those that care either way, and those that don't care at all).

They could even include a short bit of text begging people to opt in because it helps their site/app make more money from advertisers, without going as far as a pop-over or otherwise wasting a large portion of screen space.

> Its hard to imagine.

For those with very little imagination, perhaps.

> … ideal situation is that people … set … a browser preference …. Oh wait they already can.

Only with regard to cookies, and perhaps other local storage, which as I stated at the top is not at all the whole matter. And even within those limitations those options are rather ineffective against the experienced stalkers that the advertising industry consists of, because they can and will simply ignore things like DNT and will work around cookie/localstorage/other blocks using various other fingerprinting tricks.

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