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A good law IMO is: provide quantifiable anonymity metrics and post it visibly on your website somewhere (like nutrition labels). For example your likelihood of

by gerash 5y ago

A good law IMO is: provide quantifiable anonymity metrics and post it visibly on your website somewhere (like nutrition labels). For example your likelihood of being personally identified is 14%). This obviously needs a body of research to come up with these metrics and methods to verify them. Governments can fund that research. Yet right now all I've seen from EU and California regulations have been friction upon friction both for the end user and the service provider: Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). So I'd vote for repealing all these useless laws

mindslight 5y ago
> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). > So I'd vote for repealing all these useless laws This is called malicious compliance, and you're falling right for it. The entire goal of these "settings" is to trick/tire users into accepting fake consent that has not been freely given. They are a priori illegal under most privacy laws as well as common law principles. But enforcement takes time and resources. Meanwhile companies can play dumb, straight up lie about the necessity of such dialogs, and get users to mistakenly assign blame to those pesky laws rather than the malicious companies themselves.
- gerash 5y ago
  I don't think so. The law can simply ban it but they know it'll break things. So they opt for the most annoying alternative. This reminds me of California prop 65 which is as useless if not more than the cookie law. You see it at every random place with the note that "this product may contain a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer or birth defects ..." People have become fully desensitized to it because it shows up at the parking garage of their work place. If it was a real deal well perhaps it should've been banned. I'd like to repeal both prop 65 and these cookie laws. Either ban something or fine the perpetrators if it's harmful or stfu /rant
  - mindslight 5y ago
    The laws recognize that there are legitimate reasons for processing personal information - banking, medical records, utility bills, etc. I personally wouldn't mind living in a world where use of personal information for all of those activities were outright banned, but it's understandable that the law would attempt to make carve outs for them. The actual problem is the inability to update the law as companies iterate on their malicious compliance. And ascribing the bad faith actions of companies as consequences of government helps erode the political will required to enact sane updates. The prop 65 issue is somewhat orthogonal as it's the result of an impossible ask by California's citizen initiative process. Ideally that too would have been updated as its failings became apparent.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Have you ever smelled a Harbor Freight store before prop 65 and after? The difference is night and day.
    - tacocataco 5y ago
      I don't often go to harbor freight. What was the difference?
      - mindslight 5y ago
        Presumably it smells a lot less due to lower volatile organic compounds, although I don't have firsthand experience with the ones in CA. Although aren't VOC limits a separate regulatory push, apart from Prop 65? As an aside, I do have some experience with California paints and they're terrible. I'd much rather have a day or two of leaving the windows open after painting, than to have paint that never really dries and releases low level VOCs for a month.
blntechie 5y ago
> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). Easiest way to not care about the cookie notices much is to always use incognito or private mode with each website on their own container. It’s not foolproof of course as multiple fingerprinting tests will reveal but combined with tracker blockers at system level it’s better than most and don’t have to worry about those cookie notices.
- nerbert 5y ago
  Visiting everything in incognito mode has the side effect of being asked each time what I want to do with my cookies. https://klima.com/ https://klima.com/ is the first website I ever visit that actually respects the do not track request from my browser.
  - blntechie 5y ago
    There are nice cookie notice blockers lists for most of these sites. Just have to add to uBlock origin or equivalent.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
I had a cookie consent form today that literally spun and said “processing” with a progress bar for a while. Clearly, it’s artificial and it’s just pushing me to accept all. The cookie consent stuff is trash because of implementers being malicious in implementation. If anything, the laws need to go further and keep the consent, but ban/enforce against dark patterns.
- grishka 5y ago
  From a technical POV, the cookie stuff makes no sense. It should be done browser-side and the websites shouldn't have a say in the matter. I have: - Third-party cookies disabled with a few exceptions (disqus) - A filter list to hide cookie notices
  - jboy55 5y ago
    I completely agree, the individual websites asking almost seem to paint a picture that managing 3rd party cookies is a chore, where as the browser is the agent that makes cookies possible in the first place.
    - grishka 5y ago
      Most websites work fine with third-party cookies disabled so there's not much to manage either. Those that break are usually owned by companies that monetize with ads (some of yandex's services), which is telling, or are just very poorly made (aliexpress).
  - account42 5y ago
    The GDPR is not about cookies but about data collection and tracking irrespective of the implementation. If browsers block cookies by default, websites will just use other methods to store and correlate the information.
- nopcode 5y ago
  > If anything, the laws need to go further and keep the consent, but ban/enforce against dark patterns. Many of the dark patterns used today are already illegal. Noyb actively reaches out to the owners of those sites and threatens (and probably will) sue them if they don't fix it.
titzer 5y ago
> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). Funny, the most annoying offenders I find myself just ultimately avoiding. I'm glad. It's a proper chilling effect. The web is a crappy, overweight timesink populated primarily with the most meager scraps of information wrapped in an ad-laden turd sandwich, and all these cookie popups just remind me how much carnival barking and creepy stalking is going on, and I just don't want it. The web was so great in the 1990s, but now it just doesn't deserve my time anymore--ok, HN, har har--and maybe it will just implode....and we can sneak off to something better. Like what? A new kind of BBS, who knows....Imaginations are so weak these days. We couldn't possibly do anything different, or over. Oh wait, those hundreds of billions of dollars aren't going to make themselves.
nopcode 5y ago
I've sat in countless PPP meetings in Brussels on this topic. The goal was indeed to make a label similar to nutrition labels (or energy usage labels). It cannot be done. Privacy is not something you can distill to kcal, grams of salt or kWh. It is extremely complex and the industry will never fully align on a shared definition.

by gerash 5y ago

mindslight 5y ago

> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). > So I'd vote for repealing all these useless laws This is called malicious compliance, and you're falling right for it. The entire goal of these "settings" is to trick/tire users into accepting fake consent that has not been freely given. They are a priori illegal under most privacy laws as well as common law principles. But enforcement takes time and resources. Meanwhile companies can play dumb, straight up lie about the necessity of such dialogs, and get users to mistakenly assign blame to those pesky laws rather than the malicious companies themselves.

gerash 5y ago
I don't think so. The law can simply ban it but they know it'll break things. So they opt for the most annoying alternative. This reminds me of California prop 65 which is as useless if not more than the cookie law. You see it at every random place with the note that "this product may contain a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer or birth defects ..." People have become fully desensitized to it because it shows up at the parking garage of their work place. If it was a real deal well perhaps it should've been banned. I'd like to repeal both prop 65 and these cookie laws. Either ban something or fine the perpetrators if it's harmful or stfu /rant
- mindslight 5y ago
  The laws recognize that there are legitimate reasons for processing personal information - banking, medical records, utility bills, etc. I personally wouldn't mind living in a world where use of personal information for all of those activities were outright banned, but it's understandable that the law would attempt to make carve outs for them. The actual problem is the inability to update the law as companies iterate on their malicious compliance. And ascribing the bad faith actions of companies as consequences of government helps erode the political will required to enact sane updates. The prop 65 issue is somewhat orthogonal as it's the result of an impossible ask by California's citizen initiative process. Ideally that too would have been updated as its failings became apparent.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Have you ever smelled a Harbor Freight store before prop 65 and after? The difference is night and day.
  - tacocataco 5y ago
    I don't often go to harbor freight. What was the difference?
    - mindslight 5y ago
      Presumably it smells a lot less due to lower volatile organic compounds, although I don't have firsthand experience with the ones in CA. Although aren't VOC limits a separate regulatory push, apart from Prop 65? As an aside, I do have some experience with California paints and they're terrible. I'd much rather have a day or two of leaving the windows open after painting, than to have paint that never really dries and releases low level VOCs for a month.

blntechie 5y ago

> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). Easiest way to not care about the cookie notices much is to always use incognito or private mode with each website on their own container. It’s not foolproof of course as multiple fingerprinting tests will reveal but combined with tracker blockers at system level it’s better than most and don’t have to worry about those cookie notices.

nerbert 5y ago
Visiting everything in incognito mode has the side effect of being asked each time what I want to do with my cookies. https://klima.com/ https://klima.com/ is the first website I ever visit that actually respects the do not track request from my browser.
- blntechie 5y ago
  There are nice cookie notice blockers lists for most of these sites. Just have to add to uBlock origin or equivalent.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

I had a cookie consent form today that literally spun and said “processing” with a progress bar for a while. Clearly, it’s artificial and it’s just pushing me to accept all. The cookie consent stuff is trash because of implementers being malicious in implementation. If anything, the laws need to go further and keep the consent, but ban/enforce against dark patterns.

grishka 5y ago
From a technical POV, the cookie stuff makes no sense. It should be done browser-side and the websites shouldn't have a say in the matter. I have: - Third-party cookies disabled with a few exceptions (disqus) - A filter list to hide cookie notices
- jboy55 5y ago
  I completely agree, the individual websites asking almost seem to paint a picture that managing 3rd party cookies is a chore, where as the browser is the agent that makes cookies possible in the first place.
  - grishka 5y ago
    Most websites work fine with third-party cookies disabled so there's not much to manage either. Those that break are usually owned by companies that monetize with ads (some of yandex's services), which is telling, or are just very poorly made (aliexpress).
- account42 5y ago
  The GDPR is not about cookies but about data collection and tracking irrespective of the implementation. If browsers block cookies by default, websites will just use other methods to store and correlate the information.
nopcode 5y ago
> If anything, the laws need to go further and keep the consent, but ban/enforce against dark patterns. Many of the dark patterns used today are already illegal. Noyb actively reaches out to the owners of those sites and threatens (and probably will) sue them if they don't fix it.

titzer 5y ago

> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). Funny, the most annoying offenders I find myself just ultimately avoiding. I'm glad. It's a proper chilling effect. The web is a crappy, overweight timesink populated primarily with the most meager scraps of information wrapped in an ad-laden turd sandwich, and all these cookie popups just remind me how much carnival barking and creepy stalking is going on, and I just don't want it. The web was so great in the 1990s, but now it just doesn't deserve my time anymore--ok, HN, har har--and maybe it will just implode....and we can sneak off to something better. Like what? A new kind of BBS, who knows....Imaginations are so weak these days. We couldn't possibly do anything different, or over. Oh wait, those hundreds of billions of dollars aren't going to make themselves.

nopcode 5y ago

I've sat in countless PPP meetings in Brussels on this topic. The goal was indeed to make a label similar to nutrition labels (or energy usage labels). It cannot be done. Privacy is not something you can distill to kcal, grams of salt or kWh. It is extremely complex and the industry will never fully align on a shared definition.