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Aside: This was the first time I've tried to read a techcrunch article in Austria (or the EU in general). The splash screen implies I must consent to tracking c

Aside: This was the first time I've tried to read a techcrunch article in Austria (or the EU in general). The splash screen implies I must consent to tracking cookies or I can't view their content. Is that not illegal?

PietdeVries 7y ago
For me it redirects to a page from https://guce.advertising.com https://guce.advertising.com, telling me my browser is out of date and that I have to go to browsehappy.com to get a new one...
- Spare_account 7y ago
  uMatrix blocked me from viewing guce.advertising.com I disabled uMatrix in a Private tab but my pihole blocked advertising.com too. I nearly gave up thinking "I don't need to see TechCrunch, their loss" but then I remembered the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200206070011/https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/alphabet-earnings-show-google-cloud-on-10b-run-rate/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200206070011/https://techcrunc... The article loads but after a few seconds it auto forwards to a page that doesn't exist on the TechCrunch site. I get about 3 seconds to read it.
  - virgilp 7y ago
    You're right. Disable javascript on [*.]archive.org, and you can read techcrunch just fine. Arguably, better :D TL;DR: Google cloud revenue includes Saas offerings (docs, gmail etc), in addition to the infrastructure part. They may make roughly 2.5bln per quarter now, but it's still small compared to Microsoft (12.5bln per quarter, includes Azure + Office/outlook) or Amazon (10bln per quarter, AWS only). What is impressive is the growth of the business unit - more than 50% in the last year (they do have to keep it up at the same rate for 4 more years to catch up to competitors though)
  - glenneroo 7y ago
    > I get about 3 seconds to read it. This trick apparently still works: after the page loads and before it disappears, hit ESC. Instant-freeze and you can read the article! :)
- dddw 7y ago
  blokada didn't even let me go there, thanks for telling what I'm 'missin'
the_gipsy 7y ago
Yes.
sakisv 7y ago
There is this add-on for Firefox that allows you to toggle js on and off and remembers your setting per domain https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/disable-javascript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/disable-javas... It improves the user experience by a lot on Techcrunch, medium and a bunch of other news sites.
- hising 7y ago
  Techcrunch breaks navigation for me on iOS/Chrome. Cant go back without longpressing back and choose referring page from history. Gonna check that plugin. Thanks.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  Can’t you do this with just uBlock origin?
  - aikah 7y ago
    Yes, you can do that with uBlock, the <\> icon blocks javascript, very handy.
    - sakisv 7y ago
      Ah, didn't know that, thanks!
riffraff 7y ago
My understanding is that if you depend on the cookies (which is the case for an ad-driven site) it can be legal, but I'm not a lawyer.
- fnord123 7y ago
  No, the cookies are only required if the implementation of the site requires it. Not if funding depends on it.
mtgx 7y ago
It's 100% illegal under GDPR. What's funny is that Verizon's "Oath" advertising/content business has been a total and utter failure (the kind of where they pay $5 billion for Yahoo and it's worth only $200 million a year later), so I'm not even sure why they are so aggressive about this type of tracking anymore, since I don't think they do much with the data themselves. But most likely they keep selling it to Google, Facebook, and other ad networks. They aren't going to recover that $5 billion this decade doing just that, though.
BeniBoy 7y ago
This is a more complicated question that it seems! Cookie banner are not directly related to the GDPR, but to the Eprivacy directive, which, not being a Regulation, is subject to variation in national law transcription. So the answer may vary depending on your country! Still in an effort to have a uniform position on the question, DPAs( Data protection agency) are working at the EDPB (the European Data Protection Board, a sort of council of DPAs) to have a common position. One of the currently shared position is that a cookie wall impedes the "free" part of the consent, since you have to support a negative consequence. In a communication regarding the (future?) Eprivacy regulation, the EDPB clearly stated that: "In order for consent to be freely given as required by the GDPR, access to services and functionalities must not be made conditional on theconsentof a userto the processing of personal data or the processing of information related to or processed by the terminal equipment of end-users, meaning that cookie walls should be explicitly prohibited." [1] If I remember correctly the Austria DPA is not of favor of a cookie wall ban though.. From memory, not a legal advice! EDIT: try to make the explanation clearer! [1]: https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_statement_on_eprivacy_en.pdf https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_sta...
spookybird 7y ago
IANAL, but why would it be illegal. Isn’t that like saying a company can’t charge you for a product if you don’t want to pay for it. Tech crunch chooses tracking as its fee for reading its content. The law simply states that they must notify you of said tracking. It’s not a public service, and the content is generally pretty crap anyway.
- pirocks 7y ago
  Because under GDPR services cannot be conditional on giving unneeded personal information. How well this is enforced is a different matter.
  - ddalex 7y ago
    Tracking and advertising cookies are hardly personal information as defined by GDPR, which has a very specific and well defined meaning - name, phone numbers, addresses, government-issued IDs.
    - kuschku 7y ago
      GDPR explicitly considers ANY information which identifies you — even pseudonymously generated identifiers, or IPs, or similar stuff — as PII.
      - ddalex 7y ago
        This is blatantly not true. > ‘Personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person. If the tracking id cannot be correlated to a name, identification number, precise location data (not country level), then it's not PII as far as the law is concerned. The criteria is clear: "relating to an identified or identifiable natural person". There is no way that simply a session ID stored in a cookie can be traced to an identity IRL. I fell that I know what I'm talking about as I designed and implemented an customer authentication system for a medium-sized company that is based in EU, needs to respect GDPR, and I worked closely with their lawyers and operations to make sure we are fully GDPR compliant, and we passed the relevant audits.
IshKebab 7y ago
It's almost certainly illegal but the GDPR is not 100% clear about it and it has literally never been enforced, so most sites are happy to do this because they have plausible deniability and safety in numbers.
fauigerzigerk 7y ago
Austria says it's legal. The UK says it's not. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1cad75f1-5fe1-4dd3-b2ed-42547b6bf087 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1cad75f1-5fe1... Edit: On second thought, I'm not sure if the cases are sufficiently similar as Der Standard offers a subscription free of tracking and advertising as an alternative for those who reject cookies. I'm not sure if buying a TechCrunch subscription means they will stop tracking you.
piokoch 7y ago
Per GDPR it is not, you can't be banned from something if you does not give you consent. But nobody cares, if you have smart lawyers they can argue that those consents are essential for a given page to work and everything is compliant... The same with being opted out from consents by default. Nobody cares too - to opt out you typically need to click through maze of screens searching for small print links that let you say no. That's also against GDPR, BTW. For now GDPR seems like one more toothless EU regulation. Maybe they manage to catch some big US company and make them pay a few millions just to make a big show and justify the existence of GDPR. Maybe they will catch some poor guy maintaining forum for some hobby group and does not provide "right to be forgotten" functionality (that's why effectively all independent forums are going away in favor of Facebook - good job, EU). But I doubt GDPR will manage to give people more privacy. I hope that people themselves will figure out what's going on and start fighting back (by using browser plugins, stubbornly reporting misbehaving sites, trying to engage authorities to enforce GDPR, etc.). If yes, maybe GDPR will turn out to be something valuable, for now, it is not.
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/kjOTs https://archive.md/kjOTs
the_gipsy 7y ago
Also, they immediately set a cookie "GCUS" with some hash-id as value, before redirecting to the consent domain. So even if you don't accept they already set a cookie!
- treden 7y ago
  Cookie AutoDelete.

PietdeVries 7y ago

For me it redirects to a page from https://guce.advertising.com https://guce.advertising.com, telling me my browser is out of date and that I have to go to browsehappy.com to get a new one...

Spare_account 7y ago
uMatrix blocked me from viewing guce.advertising.com I disabled uMatrix in a Private tab but my pihole blocked advertising.com too. I nearly gave up thinking "I don't need to see TechCrunch, their loss" but then I remembered the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200206070011/https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/alphabet-earnings-show-google-cloud-on-10b-run-rate/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200206070011/https://techcrunc... The article loads but after a few seconds it auto forwards to a page that doesn't exist on the TechCrunch site. I get about 3 seconds to read it.
- virgilp 7y ago
  You're right. Disable javascript on [*.]archive.org, and you can read techcrunch just fine. Arguably, better :D TL;DR: Google cloud revenue includes Saas offerings (docs, gmail etc), in addition to the infrastructure part. They may make roughly 2.5bln per quarter now, but it's still small compared to Microsoft (12.5bln per quarter, includes Azure + Office/outlook) or Amazon (10bln per quarter, AWS only). What is impressive is the growth of the business unit - more than 50% in the last year (they do have to keep it up at the same rate for 4 more years to catch up to competitors though)
- glenneroo 7y ago
  > I get about 3 seconds to read it. This trick apparently still works: after the page loads and before it disappears, hit ESC. Instant-freeze and you can read the article! :)
dddw 7y ago
blokada didn't even let me go there, thanks for telling what I'm 'missin'

the_gipsy 7y ago

Yes.

sakisv 7y ago

There is this add-on for Firefox that allows you to toggle js on and off and remembers your setting per domain https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/disable-javascript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/disable-javas... It improves the user experience by a lot on Techcrunch, medium and a bunch of other news sites.

hising 7y ago
Techcrunch breaks navigation for me on iOS/Chrome. Cant go back without longpressing back and choose referring page from history. Gonna check that plugin. Thanks.
ubercow13 7y ago
Can’t you do this with just uBlock origin?
- aikah 7y ago
  Yes, you can do that with uBlock, the <\> icon blocks javascript, very handy.
  - sakisv 7y ago
    Ah, didn't know that, thanks!

riffraff 7y ago

My understanding is that if you depend on the cookies (which is the case for an ad-driven site) it can be legal, but I'm not a lawyer.

fnord123 7y ago
No, the cookies are only required if the implementation of the site requires it. Not if funding depends on it.

mtgx 7y ago

It's 100% illegal under GDPR. What's funny is that Verizon's "Oath" advertising/content business has been a total and utter failure (the kind of where they pay $5 billion for Yahoo and it's worth only $200 million a year later), so I'm not even sure why they are so aggressive about this type of tracking anymore, since I don't think they do much with the data themselves. But most likely they keep selling it to Google, Facebook, and other ad networks. They aren't going to recover that $5 billion this decade doing just that, though.

BeniBoy 7y ago

This is a more complicated question that it seems! Cookie banner are not directly related to the GDPR, but to the Eprivacy directive, which, not being a Regulation, is subject to variation in national law transcription. So the answer may vary depending on your country! Still in an effort to have a uniform position on the question, DPAs( Data protection agency) are working at the EDPB (the European Data Protection Board, a sort of council of DPAs) to have a common position. One of the currently shared position is that a cookie wall impedes the "free" part of the consent, since you have to support a negative consequence. In a communication regarding the (future?) Eprivacy regulation, the EDPB clearly stated that: "In order for consent to be freely given as required by the GDPR, access to services and functionalities must not be made conditional on theconsentof a userto the processing of personal data or the processing of information related to or processed by the terminal equipment of end-users, meaning that cookie walls should be explicitly prohibited." [1] If I remember correctly the Austria DPA is not of favor of a cookie wall ban though.. From memory, not a legal advice! EDIT: try to make the explanation clearer! [1]: https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_statement_on_eprivacy_en.pdf https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_sta...

spookybird 7y ago

IANAL, but why would it be illegal. Isn’t that like saying a company can’t charge you for a product if you don’t want to pay for it. Tech crunch chooses tracking as its fee for reading its content. The law simply states that they must notify you of said tracking. It’s not a public service, and the content is generally pretty crap anyway.

pirocks 7y ago
Because under GDPR services cannot be conditional on giving unneeded personal information. How well this is enforced is a different matter.
- ddalex 7y ago
  Tracking and advertising cookies are hardly personal information as defined by GDPR, which has a very specific and well defined meaning - name, phone numbers, addresses, government-issued IDs.
  - kuschku 7y ago
    GDPR explicitly considers ANY information which identifies you — even pseudonymously generated identifiers, or IPs, or similar stuff — as PII.
    - ddalex 7y ago
      This is blatantly not true. > ‘Personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person. If the tracking id cannot be correlated to a name, identification number, precise location data (not country level), then it's not PII as far as the law is concerned. The criteria is clear: "relating to an identified or identifiable natural person". There is no way that simply a session ID stored in a cookie can be traced to an identity IRL. I fell that I know what I'm talking about as I designed and implemented an customer authentication system for a medium-sized company that is based in EU, needs to respect GDPR, and I worked closely with their lawyers and operations to make sure we are fully GDPR compliant, and we passed the relevant audits.

IshKebab 7y ago

It's almost certainly illegal but the GDPR is not 100% clear about it and it has literally never been enforced, so most sites are happy to do this because they have plausible deniability and safety in numbers.

fauigerzigerk 7y ago

Austria says it's legal. The UK says it's not. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1cad75f1-5fe1-4dd3-b2ed-42547b6bf087 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1cad75f1-5fe1... Edit: On second thought, I'm not sure if the cases are sufficiently similar as Der Standard offers a subscription free of tracking and advertising as an alternative for those who reject cookies. I'm not sure if buying a TechCrunch subscription means they will stop tracking you.

piokoch 7y ago

Per GDPR it is not, you can't be banned from something if you does not give you consent. But nobody cares, if you have smart lawyers they can argue that those consents are essential for a given page to work and everything is compliant... The same with being opted out from consents by default. Nobody cares too - to opt out you typically need to click through maze of screens searching for small print links that let you say no. That's also against GDPR, BTW. For now GDPR seems like one more toothless EU regulation. Maybe they manage to catch some big US company and make them pay a few millions just to make a big show and justify the existence of GDPR. Maybe they will catch some poor guy maintaining forum for some hobby group and does not provide "right to be forgotten" functionality (that's why effectively all independent forums are going away in favor of Facebook - good job, EU). But I doubt GDPR will manage to give people more privacy. I hope that people themselves will figure out what's going on and start fighting back (by using browser plugins, stubbornly reporting misbehaving sites, trying to engage authorities to enforce GDPR, etc.). If yes, maybe GDPR will turn out to be something valuable, for now, it is not.

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/kjOTs https://archive.md/kjOTs

the_gipsy 7y ago

Also, they immediately set a cookie "GCUS" with some hash-id as value, before redirecting to the consent domain. So even if you don't accept they already set a cookie!

treden 7y ago
Cookie AutoDelete.