Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
A cookie notice that seeks permission to share your details with "848 of our partners" and "actively scan device details for identification".
Hate when they remove the reject all button
In the EU and UK this is also forbidden as rejecting should be as simple as accepting cookies.
In theory yes, in practice "uh-huh."
The most effective solution is just to wipe all cookies every time you close your browser, or creating strict cookie whitelists. Actually managing cookies on webpages is for normies.
and then every time you visit that one good news site, you have to go through their cookie banner each time. That or install a cookie-denying addon and hope that they don't sellout or sell your data.
You have a total of four choices:
1a. Wipe all their cookies every time, reject them every time they ask.
1b. Wipe all their cookies every time, accept them every time they ask.
2a. Don't wipe cookies, keep the "essential" ones.
2b. Don't wipe cookies, accept all our most of them.
2b is the only scenario where you might not get asked again. 1b is the easiest no thanks.
I use the duck duck go browser because it makes that the default and offers to whitelist sites for cookies if you log into them (but you can turn that off in settings). It also autorejects a lot of cookies that use common popups.
2a seems the most rational, no?
Also maybe switch to mullvad-browser instead of DDG browser, since DDG has some controversies (search: "Zach Edwards" on the wiki) on what data it saves.
Consent-o-matic browser extension can handle a lot of cookie banners and automatically rejects all possible cookies.
Reject all is actually you agreeing on the legitimate interests loophole so this is also problematic.
If trackers are disabled, some content and ads you see may not be as relevant to you.
Oh, the horror! (Not that we'll be seeing ads anyway.)
"some content and ads you see may not be as relevant to you" is what we in mathematical logic call a vacuous truth.
Back in the early 2000s, we were promised that the magic of ads online would be that they are always relevant and not terrible anymore. This is why the targeting and tracking was valid to do.
It never happened. Not for a moment.
That doesn't include the partners of their partners
I blame all these polyamorous relationships with barely any rules.
This is for legal reasons mostly. They don't think anyone reads this so they went for the most blunt and transparent language, which also gives them the most legal certainty. The banner is missing the reject all button though, which in Europe is seen as required by many of the privacy regulators.
Reject all will most likely be in the settings submenu. Websites are annoying and hide that function as far away as possible.
It is.
848 partners? Damn I hope y'all got tested.
Now name them all.
I think you actually usually can get them to list them all, never much interested, they're all going to be completely random names you never heard of, just so long as I can reject them all, that's all I care about, otherwise I have to browse a different website on principle.
As someone who works in tech, I can confidently say that many people plainly do not understand what cookies do and why they exist. There are plenty of cookies that are good and useful, but third party advertising tracking cookies are the devil folks don't like. Necessary, performance and functional cookies are all chill.
Like the cookie that stores the "Reject All the cookies" response for your next visit 😇
A question: What is preventing the site using one huge cookie for all purposes, thus preventing fully functional use of the site without also enabling all other forms of tracking?
Cookies are very small snippets of code that have a specific purpose. Making a one-size-fits-all cookie would make them complicated and much harder to track - which goes against the point of a cookie. Also, cookies are often independent of each other because they are from different providers/different tools. Having a one-size-fits-all cookie would also present a security hazard and make laws similar to GDPR about cookie tracking difficult to implement. An example of a tool that actually does use one cookie is Adobe's Marketo. You can read some more about them here. https://termly.io/resources/articles/types-of-internet-cookies/
If the partner count is larger than the number of bananas I can imagine being in a bunch I decline cookies. If I can't disable performance or targeting cookies I decline cookies. These are my rules
til I can only imagine 0 bananas in a bunch
I switched to cookie allowlist, and manually add the sites I want to remember me. I don't want to play the cookie game anymore, period. The only reason they ask is because legally they have to, and even then they do the bare minimum and use dark patterns to make it as hard as possible to decline cookies.
No more cookies for anyone, should have used them responsibly in the first place.
World’s nosiest polycule
They like to watch.
Me: *logs on to their website*
Them:
Yea because I want a news site to have my precise geolocation data.
Don't worry bro, its just me and 2000 of my closest friends. Totally legit.
It's truly crazy how much our information gets shared these days and how long it lingers.
My house spent a few years as a rental. I still get mail from people who haven't lived here in over a decade (despite deliberate efforts to stop it).
My grandpa signed up for ever "store card" you can imagine to get all the deals and rewards programs. His landline virtually never stops ringing... On August 5th alone he got, no joke, 43 spam calls (I have his landline hooked up to Jolly Roger Telephone to try and filter some of this out and help him out, so I'm forming that statistic off of the emails from them).
It's completely ridiculous and all of it needs to stop.
Well. I appreciate the honesty.. I guess.
2 days and this post has fewer likes than number of companies that get your data for visiting the Verge. Holy crap, that's terrifying
Remember when they passed laws protecting our library and video store rental histories instead of letting data brokers hoover up every song you listen to and every news article you read?
Check out the Snowden movie. That's so much worse.