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Show HN: Ninja Cookie – Get rid of cookie popups/warnings/banners
- akadruid1 6y agoIf the author is reading, this page appears in English for me but Add to Firefox button links to French language page. My locale is en-GB.
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoHello! Thank you so much. I will check this out :)
- bouke 6y agoMaybe someday this can be added to browsers, and the browsers can advertise the users’s preference to the server. Maybe even have a special request header for it. We could call it “Do-Not-Track”. A value of “1” would opt-out of all tracking (cookies).
- Dirlewanger 6y agoThese modals being everywhere is 100% a failure of lawmakers being technically inept (again) and being vague with execution. Did EU lawmakers not have anyone providing them advice when writing GDPR?
- xyzzy_plugh 6y agoI almost wonder if there was some lobbying done pro-banner because it probably results in higher engagement (I'm guessing most people click accept blindly) versus disabling cookies. I'm sure Google likes the current state better than if they had to change their browser to encourage folks to disable cookies.
- est31 6y agoYeah the banners are annoying and in fact may make it more likely for people to keep cookies. I have my browser set to clear all cookies on close, but that also deletes my "I accept" clicks, so every time I start a new browser session, and this is multiple times per day, my cookies reset. Result before: my cookies would all reset multiple times per day, all nice. Result after: I have to click stupid banners about cookies that I'm deleting soon thereafter anyways.
- jerome-jh 6y agoOh man that's annoying! The funny part is that it annoys especially those who are careful about their data. So it is basically an incentive for being loose with privacy. Long ago I used set this setting in my parent's browser but they simply could not stand it.
- noir_lord 6y agoUblock origin has additional off by default lists. One of those is called annoyances, it gets rid of a lot of that noise ime.
- mitjam 6y agoI dom‘t think so, it can even backfire big time since when data is collected based on consent the user can always retract their consent and demand all data tracked under consent to be deleted. I bet every single company would struggle to meet users´ rights under GDPR if they would be enacted more commonly or even on a regular basis.
- jayess 6y agoI turned on the anti-cookie alert option in ublock.
- eznzt 6y agoMany webpages break with this. It's really annoying.
- ffpip 6y agoCan you link some? i've never faced issues
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoBlocking cookie banner is a solution. We (Ninja Cookie) believe you have to say that you don't want to be tracked. We like to take the example of democracy and elections as a way of explaining our stance: many people complain that their opinion is never heard, or even that their voice cannot change the final outcome. But how can anyone expect an opinion to be heard, and taken into account, if it is not stated?
- Buchstabensalat 6y agoGreat from a user perspective - but wouldn't this mean the end of online advertising? I imagine conversion tracking, or even sending requests to external servers wouldn't be okay with this setting.
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoI think you are absolutely right. And that's why I think cookies are definitely not dead yet :) Cookie warnings are designed to be hard to opt-out in order to increase tracking opt-in... So that's why Ninja Cookie is good for user's privacy and web experience.
- egypturnash 6y agoPeople would still be perfectly capable of selling advertisements that worked similarly to the way ads worked before everything was online - a magazine/newspaper/tv show/etc says "our audience size is roughly X, our audience demographics are Y, here's what our ad rates are". Modern hyper-invasive ads that follow you around the net, build up a profile based on everywhere you go, and occasionally try to install unpleasant software payloads, would have trouble surviving. Can you truly make a case that this would be a bad thing?
- eli 6y agoThis works great for a media organization like ours. It's not hard to convince a company that sells power plant control software that anyone who reads utilitydive.com is a good candidate for their ad. But it's gonna be tough for sites that are "general interest" or even very specific but on a topic that just doesn't have big ad budgets behind it. Our approach also depends on building a recognizable brand in the industry and having a robust in-house ad sales and operations people. I'm not here to defend programmatic advertising, but I think if/when it goes away it's gonna suck for a lot of small indie sites.
- egypturnash 6y agoI sure do miss having Project Wonderful ads against my comics. Moderately targeted to my audience, no flash/javascript/etc bullshit. Worked real well for my solo-creator stuff. Honestly though once Patreon came along I had a goal of "turn off ads" and I'm pretty happy with that, too. "Everything on the Internet will be free forever, supported solely by ads!" was a terrible idea.
- dessant 6y agoGlobal Privacy Control [1] is a new specification that is backed by an increasing number of browser vendors and publishers. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/coming-to-a-browser-near-you-a-new-way-to-keep-sites-from-selling-your-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/coming-to-a-brow...
- sjroot 6y agoThis...this was Do Not Track..
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ben509 6y agoIt's so strange that, when dealing with an industry that thought pop-unders were a great idea, asking nicely didn't work. I can't fathom why.
- esperent 6y agoThe article is literally about how this is similar/different from Do Not Track and how new laws such as GDPR give it a chance to work where the former didn't.
- recursive 6y agoThere's no need to notify the server that your user-agent is opting out of cookies. Cookies only work because your user agent remembers them. You can opt out of cookies today by turning off cookies in your user agent. As a bonus, this even works for shady servers that don't respect earnest requests.
- Semaphor 6y agoAll the tracking is far more involved than cookies though.
- deepstack 6y agoCanvas GPU finger print, network analysis, you get tracked one way or another. Surf web with lynx or lynx2 only!
- recursive 6y agoYes. The comment I referred to specifically referred to cookies. Also, if you're being tracked by canvas fingerprinting and font enumeration, I doubt asking nicely will have any effect.
- edoceo 6y agoThis one right? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DNT https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...
- moritonal 6y agoSo you're FAQ says "Therefore, we will be offering our premium version in just a few weeks.", so why not wait till then before launching?
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoHello! Why should we wait if the free features are ready? It's much better to start testing right now :)
- severine 6y agoAccording to their FAQ, their approach is remarkably different from the popular I Don't Care About Cookies: Some current extensions promise navigation, but without a cookie banner. However, Ninja Cookie removes cookie banners by refusing the use of advertising or tracking cookies. This is not the case with current extensions. For example: I Don’t Care About Cookies: this is regularly described as the Internet user’s indispensable extension. But in fact, I Don’t Care About Cookies removes cookie banners by allowing the use of all cookies. At Ninja Cookie we understand that your online browsing privacy is important. Nous considérons donc que l’approche de I Don’t Care About Cookies n’est pas la bonne. Interesting, I'm giving it a try, thanks for your work!
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoThank you so much for this comment. Cookie popups are a pain for internet user and privacy because the design of cookie banners make them easier to opt-in than to opt-out! And we are actually trying to develop a way to improve web experience AND privacy with Ninja Cookie.
- ffpip 6y agoI don't think I Don't Care about Cookies accepts the cookies. It hides them. And some sites (facebook) take you scrolling the site as accepting cookies and tracking. So when you hide and scroll, you are opted in.
- severine 6y agoStraight from the "I Don't Care About Cookies" homepage: By using it, you explicitly allow websites to do whatever they want with cookies they set on your computer (which they mostly do anyway, whether you allow them or not). I hope Ninja Cookie release their code!
- eznzt 6y agoWhatever script you are using for smooth scrolling on that webpage, for the love of God, remove it. If I disabled smooth scrolling in my browser's preferences the last thing I want is some script emulating it poorly.
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoThanks. I will check this out.
- encom 6y agoI noticed the scrolling was janky as hell, guess that explains it. There should be a preference in Firefox to disallow websites to fuck with scrolling.
- jsmith99 6y agoWhat does this do that ublock origin doesn't? The FAQ explains the difference is that this extension makes 'clearer' your opposition to being tracked. I see there is a premium version planned but no indication of what additional features it might support.
- izacus 6y agoI've never seen uBlock Origin block the cookie and GDPR consent popups though.
- beardog 6y agoI believe you have to enable the list to block this in the settings
- Meekro 6y agoYou have to turn it on. In the options, there are several "Annoyances" blocklists (AdGuard Annoyances, Fanboy's Annoyances, uBlock Annoyances) that do this. Turn them all on for best results.
- izacus 6y agoOhh... thanks!
- GuillaumeHr 6y agouBlock is able to block cookie banners. But he is not able to reject cookie uses. And we (Ninja Cookie) are thinking you have to say you don't want to be tracked. We like to take the example of democracy and elections as a way of explaining our stance: many people complain that their opinion is never heard, or even that their voice cannot change the final outcome. But how can anyone expect an opinion to be heard, and taken into account, if it is not stated?
- sergeykish 6y agoDisable cookies by default, uMatrix * * cookie block And purge LocalStorage, SessionStorage, DatabaseStorage, CacheStorage if JavaScript allowed.
- wdb 6y agoNever understand these kind of extensions. This way you still don't know what the site trying to do with the cookies.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoIt's definitely a power-user skill to be able to even recognize "oh, this functionality is probably broken because an extension is blocking a critical cookie/script or I clicked 'No' to the cookie banner". Though I've noticed that sites that use cookie banners really do only put their ad/analytics cookies behind that gate. They don't tend to let you turn off, say, a shopping cart cookie with "No".
- XCSme 6y agoWell, I still think sometimes my AdBlocker is the issue when a site is not working, but when I disable it it still doesn't work so even for power-user is hard to know if an extension is breaking the site or not. This gets a lot harder when you use multiple such extensions.
- drcongo 6y agoWould pay good money for this if it worked in Safari.
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoWe are actually working on Safari. Everything is "ready" and Ninja Cookie will be available really soon :)
- drcongo 6y agoGreat news, thanks!
- beardog 6y agoNeat approach! This extension is proprietary (according to license on Firefox Addons site). I Don't Care About Cookies and UBlock Origin are open source. Given that such an addon requires access to all sites, I have to trust a random french developer/company not to steal my banking credentials. This is not intended to be hate and I will keep this in mind for the future as this is a good new approach. I ask that you consider if your soon to be monetized features are compatible with open source. Best of luck.
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoYou are right! To be honest: Ninja Cookie is really young and this is the first time I try to post on hackernews and I didn't plan to get all those comments. Because Ninja Cookie is really young, we are still thinking on our business model. We would like to open our sources so that you will be confident but we need first to find the right business model. No business model = no futur. And we want a futur for our Ninja Cookie. :) Meanwhile, you need to trust us :/
- samename 6y agoTrust is earned, and unfortunately, hard to come by these days when privacy is concerned.
- zamalek 6y agoThe reason this comment is probably being so poorly received is that, as users, we have to look no further than the Adblock Plus shitshow. That was a pro-privacy/pro-user addon that was acquired and then silently started tracking users. We can't trust you in the mean-time because we have hard proof that we should never trust addon publishers, especially where "free" plugins are concerned. You need to figure out what your monetization is ASAP.
- tpoacher 6y agoAssume I trust you, and tomorrow your CEO changes. Or you're acquired by Google. You're basically asking me to trust Google. And with an addon that apparently: "needs to: Access browser tabs Access browser activity during navigation Access your data for all websites" no less.
- jerome-jh 6y agoSome time ago I blocked third-party cookies in the Firefox settings. I was surprised it did not broke anything that I could notice. I wonder if this is still a meaningful way to prevent tracking?
- njitram 6y agoThis seems to be an alternative for https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/consent-o-matic/mdjildafknihdffpkfmmpnpoiajfjnjd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/consent-o-matic/md...?
- GuillaumeHr 6y agoConsent-O-Matic is actually no more developed as it was for a research paper that has since been completed.
- TrianguloY 6y agoPersonally when I visit a page I always turn off all the switchable cookies, it's really interesting to see how different pages force you to accept them, by obscuring the disable button, adding an "allow all and close" button in all steps of the process (so you click it after getting tired) or even allowing you to turn all on, but forcing to turn them off one by one. It's funny, but long and unpleasant process. I was aware of the "I don't mind cookies" extension, and that was perfect... but for the opposite! I was wondering why there wasn't an option to say no instead of yes. So I'll definitely try this. If it works as expected and you keep at least the basic features free this will be a must have for me.