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> Complaining about these notices would be like complaining that restaurants are forced to put up a sign on their front door "Kitchen employees don't wash their
by eitland 7y ago
> Complaining about these notices would be like complaining that restaurants are forced to put up a sign on their front door "Kitchen employees don't wash their hands" when they get caught not doing so.
Brilliant. I might copy and reuse that.
- manfredo 7y agoI wouldn't recommend it. It's a bad analogy and if I saw someone use it I'd think they don't have a good grasp on web technologies. Cookie tracking is used to do things like persist shopping cart items without logging in, and plenty of other things users expect websites to do. It is also used in data collection, but that's more of a moral objection to advertising-based monetization than some sort of strictly-worse practices (like kitchen employees not washing hands).
- wlll 7y agoJust to be clear, you can still use cookies, you don't need consent. Shopping carts and login sessions etc. will work just fine. You can still display advertising, that also doesn't need consent. You just can't collect and process people's data that isn't required for providing the service. If a site displays that notice, it's because they're attempting to do more with your data, or collect extra data, than is strictly needed for the service.
- manfredo 7y agoPerhaps in theory. But in practice, nobody wants to risk being fined because a court determines that some data wasn't required to provide the service. Do you really need to have persistent carts for non-logged-in customers? Can't you just only offer the cart for logged in customers? It's not required, just beneficial. Thus, these cookie disclaimers are like Proposition 65 warnings in California. They're everywhere so people ignore them.
- ummonk 7y agoIf you allow users to add items to their cart without logging in, that isn't tracking them. It's just storing the information which the user wants you to store on their browser. Many people click "add to cart" without logging in because that is the service they want. Nobody voluntarily clicks "track and analyze my activities on this site", because that is not a service people want.
- manfredo 7y ago> Many people click "add to cart" without logging in because that is the service they want. Nobody voluntarily clicks "track and analyze my activities on this site", because that is not a service people want. You realize that in order to implement "add to cart" you have to track their activity on the site? That's what the cookie is for. To track customers and persist their cart. If you can't track customers then you can't associate them with their cart. As far as analyzing activities, what is any isn't allowed is murky. Is it okay to do A/B testing and see their impact on sales? This requires tracking and analyzing user activity, but isn't necessary to provide the service. But it is necessary to actually determine whether changes to the service are positive or negative. So do you throw away A/B testing, do A/B testing and risk fines, or throw up a cookie disclaimer? > If you can't work out what data is and isn't required for the functioning of your site then perhaps you shouldn't be running one. I'm more than confident in developers' abilities to know what is and requires. I'm dubious of government bureaucrats' abilities of doing so.