13 ms·

Good. Thanks to the EU I have to click "cookie question" every where I go. Thanks guys for wasting the limited time I have in life.

lm28469 4y ago
You should try working in an international company, on the Europe side, and communicate with the US side. You'll quickly learn that what the EU does is very very very good for privacy, I have contacts in a major company and they were shocked at how the US branch operates, they have absolutely no sense of privacy, no anonymisation, no limitation on what is stored or tracked, no consent, &c. they just scrape and store as much as they can for "future use"
- joenot443 4y ago
  There are lots of people, myself included, who are aware of how much data big tech has already cultivated on us and don’t give a damn if at this point BBC or Mike’s Bike Blog get in on the action too. Really we just wanted to read our article and not be interrupted, so we can go back to what matters more: anything not on the computer. I’ve never felt protected or assisted by the cookie banners, just annoyed and inconvenienced.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    Well good things laws aren't based on your feelings. I also hate putting my seatbelt on and I'd like yo enjoy real life instead of spending so much time clicking the damn belt With the 0.1s it takes to click on a banner I'm sure you're fine. Most people probably visit less than 50 different websites per month, so at most that would be 50s per months, minus the banners you already clicked on, for which your browser already saved your choice (Unless you use incognito, but why would you do that, it's only for people who have something to hide right ? regular people just accept all data collection right ?)
    - danielbln 4y ago
      Strong data privacy is good. Dumb side effects that serve no one are not. Cookie banners, or California's "is known to cause cancer" on virtually _everything_ serve no purpose and should be re-designed.
      - qsdf38100 4y ago
        The EU law doesn’t say you must have banners. If your site doesn’t collect information on users, it doesn’t need a banner. Also the banner, if there is one, must have a 1-Click "reject all" button. Most sites fail to fully comply, because they want to force (annoy) users into clicking on "leave me alone I don’t care" button to keep selling user data. They make you go to some overly bloated list of things to disable, scroll all the way down to finally "confirm my choices". It’s voluntarily painful and with misleading wording. These sites want you to believe that all this clunkyness is required by the EU law. It’s not. It’s the good old mislead-into-approval strategy, using dark patterns and blame-the-EU rethoric.
    - joenot443 4y ago
      Having been in two car accidents, if I neglected to wear seatbelts, I'd be dead. If I neglected to click Deny on every cookie popup, big tech will have very slightly more data about me. Your equivalence of the two tells me all I need to know about the amount of time you've spent thinking about this topic. And for the record, if it really takes less than 100ms to read and clear interstitials, I'm more impressed with your button clicking skills than anything. Have you tried Osu?
- wyuenho 4y ago
  I’m pretty sure your contact in a major company will be even more shocked if they knew what all these European FinTech companies do with their customer’s data. All the important things such as purchasing habit that used to require indirect guesses are now directly available in their databases as essential functions.
- afpx 4y ago
  We don't have a right to privacy in the US.
LelouBil 4y ago
Would you prefer that the websites didn't even ask for non essential cookies ?
xdrosenheim 4y ago
Blame the sites than needs to have a million cookies.
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  As others have linked, even the European Union organs themselves all show cookie banners.
killerpopiller 4y ago
micro targeting is a threat to our democracy (cambridge analytica, Facebooks desinformation problem,..). Besides, why should third parties allowed to trade my digital persona, while basically knowing more about my interests and flaws than I am? I hate cookie banner as well but this excessive tracking must be stopped somehow.
- nottathrowaway3 4y ago
  >this excessive tracking [by website operators] must be stopped somehow Easy. Clear your cookies. Use a proxy. Use a fingerprint resistant browser. Will protect against >99% of website operators.
- user249 4y ago
  I support your concern that I don't share, so why make me suffer? I tried the "I don't care about cookies" extension but it didn't work for me.
  - Aeolos 4y ago
    The regulation says nothing about a cookie banner. Instead, it says companies cannot track you unless you give consent. If you don't like cookie banners, which are indeed really annoying, you should be turning your ire to the companies that wish to track you. They are fully-functional solutions that allow anonymous tracking without installing cookies on your computer - no banner needed then.
    - user249 4y ago
      I'm a grown up adult and if I wanted to block tracking I could. The fact that I don't should be the only answer needed but that's not good enough for the EU. They want to force companies to ask me because they want to take care of me and make sure I'm all right. You know, I left home at 18 to get away from my parents...
      - danhor 4y ago
ilkke 4y ago
I don't understand how this is "good"? Has your inconvenience been vindicated now that EU is failing to regulate short thing? Is the world somehow closer to fair and balanced now?
- user249 4y ago
  I'm suspicious of regulation until a good case is made for it. I'm suspicious of people whose world view is "we must regulate what others do" as their default position. I'm fine with regulation when there is a proven need for it.
influx 4y ago
Seriously one of the stupidest regulations I've ever seen. It would have been nice if they would have at least had the forethought to enforce regulation on a do not track header.
- cccbbbaaa 4y ago
  Neither ePrivacy nor GDPR require cookie consent popups, instead they basically say that tracking requires consent. GDPR only mentions cookies once, in its recitals. It's the adtech industry that decided to ignore DNT.
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    > Neither ePrivacy nor GDPR require cookie consent popups Except that it does. The law specifically prohibits any form of consent that is not informed and specific. As a consequence, a user cannot just consent - or disallow - cookies globally. He has to tick a box for every single domain on earth; and can only do so after reading the specific information box associated to said domain. As a user, saying "I am OK with analytics cookies but not with marketing ones" is not something I am allowed to express or setup. I have to do it for every domain because the law explicitly forbids a global solution to be implemented.
    - cccbbbaaa 4y ago
      I'm afraid you are wrong for the global disallow button, as informed and specific consent is necessary to allow the processing of personal information, not to forbid it. See the definition in article 4(11), and the definition of the basis in article 6(1)a.
  - anothernewdude 4y ago
    Correct. Cookie banners were required before GDPR. GDPR is the one that makes dealing with EU citizens online a risky enterprise, so the large entrenched players have the advantage.
    - 4y ago
tekbog 4y ago
Most websites don't need to gather and sell your data but here we are.
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  Thankfully I don't give them my data. Wish everyone could've done the same, but here we are.
xdennis 4y ago
It's not the EU's fault that you have to click cookie banners. Those banners are only required if a website plans to do malicious things with the cookies. If they're used to track who's logged in, they are not required. They are more akin to the "Do not eat" warnings on silica packs... except on the internet everyone swallows.
- jdasdf 4y ago
  >It's not the EU's fault that you have to click cookie banners. Yes it is.
  - ampersandwhich 4y ago
    No it's not.
- endgame 4y ago
  So the EU should ban the malicious thing, instead of putting that fatigue onto all users everywhere.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    It's not malicious if the user wants it to happen, that's why its asking.
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    That’s exactly what the EU has done. They only require that people consent to be tracked for non-essential reasons. Don’t track people for non-essential reasons, then you don’t need to ask for consent, which means you don’t need a cookie banner.
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  No, it's always required.
  - lillecarl 4y ago
taspeotis 4y ago
> This browser extension removes cookie warnings from almost all websites and saves you thousands of unnecessary clicks! https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  Note that this extension is owned by Avast, which is known to harvest user data; by installing this extension, you allow Avast to harvest all your browsing data.
- dmix 4y ago
  This should be an option in uBlock (if it isnt already).
  - chrismorgan 4y ago
    It’s the EasyList Cookie filter list.
- registeredcorn 4y ago
  The only thing holding me back from using that extension is > In most cases, it just blocks or hides cookie related pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do). If there was a way to be assured that 99.9% of the time it hit reject all, instead of accept, I would absolutely use it.
  - _flux 4y ago
    With Temporary Containers extension it's fine that some sites set cookies, so then it doesn't matter that much how the script removes the dialog.
  - jonas-w 4y ago
    Consent-o-Matic [0] tries to solve this. You could even allow specific sorts of cookies. It will (on most pages [1]) fill out these annoying formes based on the preferences you set. [0] https://consentomatic.au.dk/ https://consentomatic.au.dk/ [1] https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic#compatible-cmps https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic#compatible-cmps
dmix 4y ago
The complete lack of design standards is what kills the utility. They should all have 3 buttons: "accept all" or "reject all" or "customize", dead simple. Every time it's a different design, different button text, different options. Usually rejecting = multi layers of options. A perfect example of good intentions making bad policy.
- vishal0123 4y ago
  I have hard time believing it is not intentional. I think Europe could easily enforce consistent UI which could be automated through ad blocker, but now they know that most companies would rather stop serving Europe than not track users for ad.
  - lillecarl 4y ago
    I doubt "most companies" would want to lose out on one of the biggest economies on our planet. Some have built unsustainable businesses incompatible with privacy though. I'm using uBlock and Consent-o-matic to remove as much tracking as possible already. There's already the "do not track" header that noone respects.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038100
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  > Every time it's a different design, different button text, different options this is on purpose if you could commit where the Deny button was to muscle memory, you would click it every time
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Making rejecting opt-in cookies more difficult than accepting them is illegal. Fines have already been handed out for this. See https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be/citizen/iab-europe-held-responsible-for-a-mechanism-that-infringes-the-gdpr https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be/citizen/iab-europe-he... for just one example. Even Google has a "reject all" button in their cookie prompt these days. If rejecting takes you through multiple layers, consider reporting the website or their tracking partner to your local DPA. The ad industry is intentionally making their popups as inconvenient as possible. They childishly point to the EU legislation that they "have" to make your life miserable with those popups but they really don't. They can choose to make your life easier, but that threatens their business model of using you and your browser as a source of revenue. They can simply stop tracking you at all if you send the do not track header. You wouldn't even see the popups! They can even still serve ads, just not the ones based on the profile they've collected.
pornel 4y ago
Thank Google and other adtech for lobbying and fighting to keep tracking legal. The popups are malicious compliance. They want you to hate the popups, so that you will turn against privacy laws, and fully submit to the unimpeded surveillance business. And it’s working: people are installing “I don’t care about cookies” extension that agrees to data collection, deanonimization, profiling, and sale of this data.
kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]

lm28469 4y ago

You should try working in an international company, on the Europe side, and communicate with the US side. You'll quickly learn that what the EU does is very very very good for privacy, I have contacts in a major company and they were shocked at how the US branch operates, they have absolutely no sense of privacy, no anonymisation, no limitation on what is stored or tracked, no consent, &c. they just scrape and store as much as they can for "future use"

joenot443 4y ago
There are lots of people, myself included, who are aware of how much data big tech has already cultivated on us and don’t give a damn if at this point BBC or Mike’s Bike Blog get in on the action too. Really we just wanted to read our article and not be interrupted, so we can go back to what matters more: anything not on the computer. I’ve never felt protected or assisted by the cookie banners, just annoyed and inconvenienced.
- lm28469 4y ago
  Well good things laws aren't based on your feelings. I also hate putting my seatbelt on and I'd like yo enjoy real life instead of spending so much time clicking the damn belt With the 0.1s it takes to click on a banner I'm sure you're fine. Most people probably visit less than 50 different websites per month, so at most that would be 50s per months, minus the banners you already clicked on, for which your browser already saved your choice (Unless you use incognito, but why would you do that, it's only for people who have something to hide right ? regular people just accept all data collection right ?)
  - danielbln 4y ago
    Strong data privacy is good. Dumb side effects that serve no one are not. Cookie banners, or California's "is known to cause cancer" on virtually _everything_ serve no purpose and should be re-designed.
    - qsdf38100 4y ago
      The EU law doesn’t say you must have banners. If your site doesn’t collect information on users, it doesn’t need a banner. Also the banner, if there is one, must have a 1-Click "reject all" button. Most sites fail to fully comply, because they want to force (annoy) users into clicking on "leave me alone I don’t care" button to keep selling user data. They make you go to some overly bloated list of things to disable, scroll all the way down to finally "confirm my choices". It’s voluntarily painful and with misleading wording. These sites want you to believe that all this clunkyness is required by the EU law. It’s not. It’s the good old mislead-into-approval strategy, using dark patterns and blame-the-EU rethoric.
  - joenot443 4y ago
    Having been in two car accidents, if I neglected to wear seatbelts, I'd be dead. If I neglected to click Deny on every cookie popup, big tech will have very slightly more data about me. Your equivalence of the two tells me all I need to know about the amount of time you've spent thinking about this topic. And for the record, if it really takes less than 100ms to read and clear interstitials, I'm more impressed with your button clicking skills than anything. Have you tried Osu?
wyuenho 4y ago
I’m pretty sure your contact in a major company will be even more shocked if they knew what all these European FinTech companies do with their customer’s data. All the important things such as purchasing habit that used to require indirect guesses are now directly available in their databases as essential functions.
afpx 4y ago
We don't have a right to privacy in the US.

LelouBil 4y ago

Would you prefer that the websites didn't even ask for non essential cookies ?

xdrosenheim 4y ago

Blame the sites than needs to have a million cookies.

shp0ngle 4y ago
As others have linked, even the European Union organs themselves all show cookie banners.

killerpopiller 4y ago

micro targeting is a threat to our democracy (cambridge analytica, Facebooks desinformation problem,..). Besides, why should third parties allowed to trade my digital persona, while basically knowing more about my interests and flaws than I am? I hate cookie banner as well but this excessive tracking must be stopped somehow.

nottathrowaway3 4y ago
>this excessive tracking [by website operators] must be stopped somehow Easy. Clear your cookies. Use a proxy. Use a fingerprint resistant browser. Will protect against >99% of website operators.
user249 4y ago
I support your concern that I don't share, so why make me suffer? I tried the "I don't care about cookies" extension but it didn't work for me.
- Aeolos 4y ago
  The regulation says nothing about a cookie banner. Instead, it says companies cannot track you unless you give consent. If you don't like cookie banners, which are indeed really annoying, you should be turning your ire to the companies that wish to track you. They are fully-functional solutions that allow anonymous tracking without installing cookies on your computer - no banner needed then.
  - user249 4y ago
    I'm a grown up adult and if I wanted to block tracking I could. The fact that I don't should be the only answer needed but that's not good enough for the EU. They want to force companies to ask me because they want to take care of me and make sure I'm all right. You know, I left home at 18 to get away from my parents...
    - danhor 4y ago

ilkke 4y ago

I don't understand how this is "good"? Has your inconvenience been vindicated now that EU is failing to regulate short thing? Is the world somehow closer to fair and balanced now?

user249 4y ago
I'm suspicious of regulation until a good case is made for it. I'm suspicious of people whose world view is "we must regulate what others do" as their default position. I'm fine with regulation when there is a proven need for it.

influx 4y ago

Seriously one of the stupidest regulations I've ever seen. It would have been nice if they would have at least had the forethought to enforce regulation on a do not track header.

cccbbbaaa 4y ago
Neither ePrivacy nor GDPR require cookie consent popups, instead they basically say that tracking requires consent. GDPR only mentions cookies once, in its recitals. It's the adtech industry that decided to ignore DNT.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  > Neither ePrivacy nor GDPR require cookie consent popups Except that it does. The law specifically prohibits any form of consent that is not informed and specific. As a consequence, a user cannot just consent - or disallow - cookies globally. He has to tick a box for every single domain on earth; and can only do so after reading the specific information box associated to said domain. As a user, saying "I am OK with analytics cookies but not with marketing ones" is not something I am allowed to express or setup. I have to do it for every domain because the law explicitly forbids a global solution to be implemented.
  - cccbbbaaa 4y ago
    I'm afraid you are wrong for the global disallow button, as informed and specific consent is necessary to allow the processing of personal information, not to forbid it. See the definition in article 4(11), and the definition of the basis in article 6(1)a.
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  Correct. Cookie banners were required before GDPR. GDPR is the one that makes dealing with EU citizens online a risky enterprise, so the large entrenched players have the advantage.
  - 4y ago

tekbog 4y ago

Most websites don't need to gather and sell your data but here we are.

anothernewdude 4y ago
Thankfully I don't give them my data. Wish everyone could've done the same, but here we are.

xdennis 4y ago

It's not the EU's fault that you have to click cookie banners. Those banners are only required if a website plans to do malicious things with the cookies. If they're used to track who's logged in, they are not required. They are more akin to the "Do not eat" warnings on silica packs... except on the internet everyone swallows.

jdasdf 4y ago
>It's not the EU's fault that you have to click cookie banners. Yes it is.
- ampersandwhich 4y ago
  No it's not.
endgame 4y ago
So the EU should ban the malicious thing, instead of putting that fatigue onto all users everywhere.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  It's not malicious if the user wants it to happen, that's why its asking.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  That’s exactly what the EU has done. They only require that people consent to be tracked for non-essential reasons. Don’t track people for non-essential reasons, then you don’t need to ask for consent, which means you don’t need a cookie banner.
anothernewdude 4y ago
No, it's always required.
- lillecarl 4y ago

taspeotis 4y ago

> This browser extension removes cookie warnings from almost all websites and saves you thousands of unnecessary clicks! https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

shp0ngle 4y ago
Note that this extension is owned by Avast, which is known to harvest user data; by installing this extension, you allow Avast to harvest all your browsing data.
dmix 4y ago
This should be an option in uBlock (if it isnt already).
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  It’s the EasyList Cookie filter list.
registeredcorn 4y ago
The only thing holding me back from using that extension is > In most cases, it just blocks or hides cookie related pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do). If there was a way to be assured that 99.9% of the time it hit reject all, instead of accept, I would absolutely use it.
- _flux 4y ago
  With Temporary Containers extension it's fine that some sites set cookies, so then it doesn't matter that much how the script removes the dialog.
- jonas-w 4y ago
  Consent-o-Matic [0] tries to solve this. You could even allow specific sorts of cookies. It will (on most pages [1]) fill out these annoying formes based on the preferences you set. [0] https://consentomatic.au.dk/ https://consentomatic.au.dk/ [1] https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic#compatible-cmps https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic#compatible-cmps

dmix 4y ago

The complete lack of design standards is what kills the utility. They should all have 3 buttons: "accept all" or "reject all" or "customize", dead simple. Every time it's a different design, different button text, different options. Usually rejecting = multi layers of options. A perfect example of good intentions making bad policy.

vishal0123 4y ago
I have hard time believing it is not intentional. I think Europe could easily enforce consistent UI which could be automated through ad blocker, but now they know that most companies would rather stop serving Europe than not track users for ad.
- lillecarl 4y ago
  I doubt "most companies" would want to lose out on one of the biggest economies on our planet. Some have built unsustainable businesses incompatible with privacy though. I'm using uBlock and Consent-o-matic to remove as much tracking as possible already. There's already the "do not track" header that noone respects.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038100
jareklupinski 4y ago
> Every time it's a different design, different button text, different options this is on purpose if you could commit where the Deny button was to muscle memory, you would click it every time
jeroenhd 4y ago
Making rejecting opt-in cookies more difficult than accepting them is illegal. Fines have already been handed out for this. See https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be/citizen/iab-europe-held-responsible-for-a-mechanism-that-infringes-the-gdpr https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be/citizen/iab-europe-he... for just one example. Even Google has a "reject all" button in their cookie prompt these days. If rejecting takes you through multiple layers, consider reporting the website or their tracking partner to your local DPA. The ad industry is intentionally making their popups as inconvenient as possible. They childishly point to the EU legislation that they "have" to make your life miserable with those popups but they really don't. They can choose to make your life easier, but that threatens their business model of using you and your browser as a source of revenue. They can simply stop tracking you at all if you send the do not track header. You wouldn't even see the popups! They can even still serve ads, just not the ones based on the profile they've collected.

pornel 4y ago

Thank Google and other adtech for lobbying and fighting to keep tracking legal. The popups are malicious compliance. They want you to hate the popups, so that you will turn against privacy laws, and fully submit to the unimpeded surveillance business. And it’s working: people are installing “I don’t care about cookies” extension that agrees to data collection, deanonimization, profiling, and sale of this data.

kerpotgh 4y ago

[dead]