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Not even EU institutions themselves are falling back on deaults that don't require cookie consent. I'm constantly clicking away cookie banners on UK government

Not even EU institutions themselves are falling back on deaults that don't require cookie consent. I'm constantly clicking away cookie banners on UK government or NHS (our public healthcare system) websites. The ICO (UK privacy watchdog) requires cookie consent. The EU Data Protection Supervisor wants cookie consent. Almost everyone does. And you know why that is? It's not because they are scammy ad funded sites or because of government surveillance. It's because the "cookie law" requires consent even for completely reasonable forms of traffic analysis with the sole purpose of improving the site for its visitors. This is impractical, unreasonable, counterproductive and unintelligent.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>This is impractical, unreasonable, counterproductive and unintelligent. It keeps the political grifters who make these regulations employed, that's kind of the main point in EU/UKs endless stream of regulations upon regulations.
troupo 1y ago
> It's because the "cookie law" requires consent even for completely reasonable forms of traffic analysis with the sole purpose of improving the site for its visitors Yup. That's what those 2000+ "partners" are all about if you believe their "legitimate interest" claims: "improve traffic"
grues-dinner 1y ago
> completely reasonable This is a personal decision to be made by the data "donor". The NHS website cookie banner (which does have a correct implementation in that the "no consent" button is of equal prominence to the "mi data es su data" button) says: > We'd also like to use analytics cookies. These collect feedback and send information about how our site is used to services called Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Qualtrics Feedback and Google Analytics. We use this information to improve our site. In my opinion, it is not, as described, "completely reasonable" to consider such data hand-off to third parties as implicitly consented to. I may trust the NHS but I may not trust their partners. If the data collected is strictly required for the delivery of the service and is used only for that purpose and destroyed when the purpose is fulfilled (say, login session management), you don't need a banner. The NHS website is in a slightly tricky position, because I genuinely think they will be trying to use the data for site and service improvement, at least for now, and they hopefully have done their homework to make sure Adobe, say, are also not misusing the data. Do I think the same from, say, the Daily Mail website? Absolutely not, they'll be selling every scrap of data before the TCP connection even closes to anyone paying. Now, I may know the Daily Mail is a wretched hive of villainy and can just not go there, but I do not know about every website I visit. Sadly the scumbags are why no-one gets nice things.
- fauigerzigerk 1y ago
  >This is a personal decision to be made by the data "donor". My problem is that users cannot make this personal decision based on the cookie consent banners because all sites have to request this consent even if they do exactly what they should be doing in their users' interest. There's no useful signal in this noise. The worst data harvesters look exactly the same as a site that does basic traffic analysis for basic usability purposes. The law makes it easy for the worst offenders to hide behind everyone else. That's why I'm calling it counterproductive. [Edit] Wrt NHS specifically - this is a case in point. They use some tools to analyse traffic in order to improve their website. If they honour their own privacy policy, they will have configured those tools accordingly. I understand that this can still be criticised from various angles. But is this criticism worth destroying the effectiveness of the law and burying far more important distinctions? The law makes the NHS and Daily Mail look exactly the same to users as far as privacy and data protection is concered. This is completely misleading, don't you think?
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    > even if they do exactly what they should be doing in their users' interest If they only do this, they don't need to show anything.
    - fauigerzigerk 1y ago
      Then we clearly disagree on what they should be doing. And this is the crux of the problem. The law helps a tiny minority of people enforce an extremely (and in my view pointlessly) strict version of privacy at the cost of misleading everybody else into thinking that using analytics for the purpose of making usability improvements is basically the same thing as sending personal data to 500 data brokers to make money off of it.
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        If you are talking for example about invasive A/B tests, then the solution is to pay for testers, not to test on your users. What exactly do think should be allowed which still respect privacy, which isn't now?

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

>This is impractical, unreasonable, counterproductive and unintelligent. It keeps the political grifters who make these regulations employed, that's kind of the main point in EU/UKs endless stream of regulations upon regulations.

troupo 1y ago

> It's because the "cookie law" requires consent even for completely reasonable forms of traffic analysis with the sole purpose of improving the site for its visitors Yup. That's what those 2000+ "partners" are all about if you believe their "legitimate interest" claims: "improve traffic"

grues-dinner 1y ago

> completely reasonable This is a personal decision to be made by the data "donor". The NHS website cookie banner (which does have a correct implementation in that the "no consent" button is of equal prominence to the "mi data es su data" button) says: > We'd also like to use analytics cookies. These collect feedback and send information about how our site is used to services called Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Qualtrics Feedback and Google Analytics. We use this information to improve our site. In my opinion, it is not, as described, "completely reasonable" to consider such data hand-off to third parties as implicitly consented to. I may trust the NHS but I may not trust their partners. If the data collected is strictly required for the delivery of the service and is used only for that purpose and destroyed when the purpose is fulfilled (say, login session management), you don't need a banner. The NHS website is in a slightly tricky position, because I genuinely think they will be trying to use the data for site and service improvement, at least for now, and they hopefully have done their homework to make sure Adobe, say, are also not misusing the data. Do I think the same from, say, the Daily Mail website? Absolutely not, they'll be selling every scrap of data before the TCP connection even closes to anyone paying. Now, I may know the Daily Mail is a wretched hive of villainy and can just not go there, but I do not know about every website I visit. Sadly the scumbags are why no-one gets nice things.

fauigerzigerk 1y ago
>This is a personal decision to be made by the data "donor". My problem is that users cannot make this personal decision based on the cookie consent banners because all sites have to request this consent even if they do exactly what they should be doing in their users' interest. There's no useful signal in this noise. The worst data harvesters look exactly the same as a site that does basic traffic analysis for basic usability purposes. The law makes it easy for the worst offenders to hide behind everyone else. That's why I'm calling it counterproductive. [Edit] Wrt NHS specifically - this is a case in point. They use some tools to analyse traffic in order to improve their website. If they honour their own privacy policy, they will have configured those tools accordingly. I understand that this can still be criticised from various angles. But is this criticism worth destroying the effectiveness of the law and burying far more important distinctions? The law makes the NHS and Daily Mail look exactly the same to users as far as privacy and data protection is concered. This is completely misleading, don't you think?
- 1718627440 1y ago
  > even if they do exactly what they should be doing in their users' interest If they only do this, they don't need to show anything.
  - fauigerzigerk 1y ago
    Then we clearly disagree on what they should be doing. And this is the crux of the problem. The law helps a tiny minority of people enforce an extremely (and in my view pointlessly) strict version of privacy at the cost of misleading everybody else into thinking that using analytics for the purpose of making usability improvements is basically the same thing as sending personal data to 500 data brokers to make money off of it.
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      If you are talking for example about invasive A/B tests, then the solution is to pay for testers, not to test on your users. What exactly do think should be allowed which still respect privacy, which isn't now?