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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

#331

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

No, that's bullshit. Nobody is after case-by-case decisions.

People are under DoS attacks from corporations throwing single-sided contracts into them until they make a mistake and accept something.

Those boxes are just that, harassment, done in the hope people will pay them to go away.

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

#332

Post by immibis »

robin_reala wrote: post #206
cluckindan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate interest checkboxes are technically not asking for consent, they are considered informational. OneTrust popups are especially inflammatory in this regard.

Legitimate interest can absolutely be opted-out of: (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/67…

That doesn't say you can opt out. It says sometimes legitimate interests aren't enough. For example, as a hypothetical service provider I have a legitimate interest in tracking your GPS location everywhere you go, because it helps me predict what kind of service my customers like based on where they live and work. However, your right to not be tracked is more important, so I can't use my legitimate interest to justify the tracking in this case.

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

#333

Post by ryandrake »

dspillett wrote: post #287
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.

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.

The message from these antagonistic companies is clearly: "Look at what they made me do to you!" And users (even here in the HN comment section) fall for it. Like a beaten spouse. Yessssssss, it's the evil EU.... Why do they force you to beat me up?

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

#334

Post by ryandrake »

GJim wrote: post #239
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…

> I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. SV and the advertising industry thrives on those misunderstandings. Put simply, there is no need for "cookie banners" unless those cookies are being used to track or personally identify me (hello advertisers!), in which case, I need to give my opt-in informed consent to allow this; and so I should. Hardly surprising SV and the advertising i…

Silicon Valley in general has a huge problem understanding consent. If the world was a night club, "Silicon Valley" would be that creepy guy who goes up to everyone saying "You're dancing with me now, unless you opt out [Yes | Ask again later]."

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

#335

Post by GardenLetter27 »

vundercind wrote: post #327
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such basic functionality as cookies shouldn't need explicit consent. The consent is you navigated to the webpage, if you don't like it you can use a browser that doesn't set cookies.

Tracking people with cookies is the part that requires consent. Setting cookies that aren’t used to track people, doesn’t require consent. The consent is for tracking that happens to use cookies, not for cookies themselves.

But you can configure all that client-side anyway.

You choose what you save on your computer and send in responses, not the server sending you the HTML.

The current situation is absurd, the EU just doesn't understand technology.

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

#336

Post by marcosdumay »

taosx wrote: post #185
what wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should just geo block EU visitors instead.

I know a lot of people that wouldn't mind that. 1. There are ways to bypass geo-block. 2. People would build alternatives specifically for EU (with few exceptions). 3. They could even offer those alternatives to US, but with better privacy out of the box.

On #1, yeah, you can. But don't expect the site to respect the EU laws.

I'm all for the hostile corporation to hostilize themselves into complete inaccessibility too. Let them build their castle, with a moat, and not let anyone near them. But unfortunately, they are still smarter than that.

(But anyway, they seem to be getting dumber by the minute, so there's still hope.)

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

#337

Post by Ylpertnodi »

dspillett wrote: post #290
bawolff wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ticke…

>A checkbox or button, anywhere on the page, that you can click to opt-in or ignore to not op-in.

How about no click to opt out, and a click to opt in?

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

#338

Post by GardenLetter27 »

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…

But you're the one saving and sending the cookies anyway - not the website.

If you don't want to send some of them, then just configure your client not to do that.

It's bizarre that the onus is put on the websites themselves to request consent before requesting that the client sets the cookies.

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

#339

Post by Rattled »

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…

Some of the most intrusive cookie banners I've seen are on EU institutional websites. If they can't find a way to provide access to information without pages of consent boxes what hope have the rest of us. The law came ten years too late and focused on a narrow technical step rather than the privacy goals directly.

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

#340

Post by GardenLetter27 »

happymellon wrote: post #329
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such basic functionality as cookies shouldn't need explicit consent. The consent is you navigated to the webpage, if you don't like it you can use a browser that doesn't set cookies.

Me navigating to a webpage is far from consent. How do I even know that you want to try and farm my personal data until I go there? Perhaps you should put a click through gateway that states that "proceeding on to this website will sell your personal information to spammy, scummy advertising".

Setting a cookie isn't farming personal data.

You can configure your web browser to only send first-party cookies back and never set others. Or configure a subset of domains.

If you're worried about it you should be doing that anyway, since the cookies could be set despite the pop-up (or some websites might ignore the consent pop-up requirement entirely).

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