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The most frustrating thing about these cookie banners (more like cookie lightboxes) is that almost none of them are compliant with the rules. Unfortunately I do
by hnarn 5y ago
The most frustrating thing about these cookie banners (more like cookie lightboxes) is that almost none of them are compliant with the rules. Unfortunately I don't have time to find the source right now, but I'm pretty sure I've read official EU guidance docs clearly stating that many "dark patterns" are simply illegal. For example making the "Accept all cookies" button require less effort than only accepting necessary cookies, which almost every page does.
I feel like the current state of cookie consent is completely broken, partly due to the complete lack of enforcement, and having a browser-specific setting that propagates to all pages would be great -- but again you have to think about incentives. If pages are not required to accept these settings, their incentive is to ignore them and to claim that since it's unfortunately not supported "yet" (read "ever"), you still have to wade through the cookie form.
- lrem 5y agoMax Schrems now has a foundation you can donate to: https://noyb.eu/en https://noyb.eu/en
- GrayShade 5y ago> For example making the "Accept all cookies" button require less effort than only accepting necessary cookies, which almost every page does. Like those that make you uncheck 10 or 20 entries one by one.
- StavrosK 5y agoOr like those that make the "Accept all cookies" button green and the "accept necessary" white/colorless/default.
- squiggleblaz 5y agoI recently came across a website that makes the "Accept all cookies" button secondary and the the "accept necessary" primary. It's such an effort to actually press the primary button — I have been so trained by the completely disdainful behavior of the majority of websites.
- StavrosK 5y agoI saw the exact same thing and was surprised too! I wonder if it was a site that was on HN... I press "accept all" by accident and thought "wow".
- squiggleblaz 5y agoWell I needed to visit the website due to an unfortunate event in meatspace - in no way hacker news related. So it seems there's definitely at least two sites which do it!
- tempodox 5y agoThose are the worst. And calling them “legitimate interest” only adds insult to injury.
- Macha 5y agoAlso the providers that appear to offer a even choice of accept all/reject all, except you realise that they've classified a second "legitimate interest" option for everything which the reject all doesn't cover (because that would be objecting, not rejecting)
- blowfish721 5y agoThe best ones are the ones that provide a list to 100 partners and ask you to visit them to opt out. Usually just close the tab when I hit one of those.
- mtgx 5y agoOr hundreds/thousands like Verizon Media/Oath & friends.
- Sander_Marechal 5y agoIt's EU, it varies by country. Each country takes the European GRPR law/guidelines and implements in on the national level. There may be slight differences. Your specific example where opting out must not cost more effort than opting in is specific to the UK GDPR implementation for instance.
- hnarn 5y agoThe point is that it's not being enforced, so if we assume what you say is true for the sake of argument, then the only way that would be OK was if a different cookie banner was shown for visitors from the UK, which I highly doubt happens in any meaningful percent of cases.
- rikroots 5y agoNo. The GDPR is an EU Regulation which is, by definition, a binding legislative act. It applies in its entirety across the EU - no exceptions, no opt-outs. EU Member States are allowed to interpret (to a greater or lesser degree) EU Directives when they translate them into national law[1] The EU GDPR no longer applies in the UK because the UK is no longer a member of the EU. The EU GDPR has been incorporated into UK law (as the UK GDPR) but there's nothing preventing the UK Government varying it at any point in the future[2] [1] - https://europa.eu/european-union/law/legal-acts_en https://europa.eu/european-union/law/legal-acts_en [2] - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/dp-at-the-end-of-the-transition-period/transition-period-faqs/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/dp-at-the-end-of-the-tr...
- 7952 5y agoI have been building some sites where I have explicitly tried to remove or avoid cookies completely. It is really tricky as any third party script or embed can set cookies, which may be retained depending on browser version. We end up using generic cookie prompts just in case to appease corporate compliance even when nothing is usually set on the page. And the http nature of cookies make automating things much more difficult. You can't just drop in some javascript that overrides document.cookie, and even if you could it would not be supported by all browsers. What I would like is to be able to whitelist domains in content security policy and reject everything else by default.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Dayshine 5y agoWhy avoid cookies entirely? You don't need a cookie banner for cookies essential to the functioning of your site.
- akie 5y agoYou want to avoid cookies entirely so that you don't need a cookie policy and that you don't need a cookie banner. It's also significantly easier to convince a lawyer that you don't need these things if you can prove that there are no cookies whatsoever. And even then they'll be suspicious. It's harder than it looks, just embedding a YouTube video for example already sets third-party cookies. Same with embedding a Twitter feed or Google Analytics. There are solutions for all of these things, but the standard/easy way of doing these things means your user gets a third-party cookie, which means you need the banner.
- hnarn 5y ago> You want to avoid cookies entirely so that you don't need a cookie policy and that you don't need a cookie banner. Wrong. Functional cookies are exempt.
- 5y ago
- kamray23 5y agoBut they pretend to be legal. They at least make an attempt to seem kind of legal. And that's what matters. If you only accept a spec like this there is no way to pretend to be legal other than to accept it anymore. Make custom cookie banners totally illegal. Force the use of this. No dark patterns, no semi-legal trickery. Either you use it and accept it, or you don't. Take out the grey area.
- hnarn 5y agoThat's my point: that if you create a standard like this but don't enforce it (which is not the same thing as its legality) it won't matter. What is the consequence going to be of ignoring it? Will it be enough to actually create an incentive more attractive than breaking the law?
- jakub_g 5y agoAt least in France, there's CNIL (Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés) that started going after the top non-compliant websites and sending love letters like "you have N days to become compliant". [1] https://www.cnil.fr/en/home https://www.cnil.fr/en/home
- quotemstr 5y agoAnd then Europeans complain when the rest of the world geoblocks them.
- samjmck 5y agoNo one's complaining about not being able to access shitty websites that can't be arsed to make clear which companies are tracking you.
- galgalesh 5y agoWhere are these fictional Europeans who want strong enforcement of privacy laws and complain about geoblocking? The whole point is that either you follow our laws or you lose access to Europe. Geoblocking is just self-regulation.
- datenarsch 5y agoHere's one. I hate it how I can no longer access 90% of local US news websites.
- hnarn 5y agoEvery single time I've had this problem I've just used the Google cache or archive.org
- anoncake 5y agoNo, we politely inform you that geoblocking is not actually required. But thanks for protecting us from your privacy-violating website anyway.
- oftenwrong 5y agoInstead of permitting sites to request consent of the user directly, they should be required to request consent via an official EU site. It could work like an authorisation redirect flow. This would standardise the consent UI, and prevent sites from implementing dark patterns.
- akie 5y agoThen the EU tracks everything everyone does. Nice.
- oftenwrong 5y agoThe site could provide an opaque ID for user. Also, anti-tracking on the part of the EU could be enforced by law.
- kiallmacinnes 5y agoIgnoring the many obvious privacy issues with this proposal, have you considered how this would result in a legally mandated single point of failure for (nearly..) all web sites?
- hnarn 5y agoThis is an awful idea.
- tomjen3 5y agoBetter yet, a standard browser interface.
- TX0098812 5y agoYup, this is absolutely the case. Consent in order to count as consent has to be clearly affirmative, freely given, specific, informed, unambiguous and can be withdrawn. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/