The EU's own government websites have these same cookie banners. Are they maliciously compliant with their own regulations?

EU made bad laws that have encouraged this kind of behavior. And now we're all suffering.

Look at the CCPA in California for legislation that accomplishes largely the same goals, but doesn't break the web due to "malicious compliance".

The result matters, which is why regulations should be considered carefully. The whole cookie fiasco is exactly that: they created a whole industry of shitty compliance and the rules are complex enough that every engineering team is like "just use the off-the-shelf shitty thing". And here we are.

No. The cookie banners have ruined the internet. The banners haven’t fixed anything. Business as usual, just click here.

Not quite.

> This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out or facilitating the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order to provide an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user.

This is the reason why these are usually separated to "strictly necessary" and "functional" cookies. Functional cookies are things which enhance the functionality, but are not strictly necessary. These would generally include things like persistent cookie for language choice rather than just session one.

This gets repeated a lot, but is not my experience after having worked with both in-house and contracted lawyers to understand how functional cookies are handled. We end up wanting something more durable than session cookies to track user preferences so we can set them next time they visit. This is super standard light/dark mode, region, language type of stuff. But that's considered “tracking" in many of these discussions, which never made sense to me.

Yet every website still has them.

Try the demo on this site: https://fingerprint.com/demo

Both in incognito and normal modes. I bet you'll get the same fingerprinting ID in both.

So yes, they can track you in incognito mode, too.

Im pretty sure it is illegal. In my understanding, it must be equally easy to reject and accept. And the website MUST continue working under either choice. Which is not the case here.

I think the lawmakers should have made all forms of tracking illegal instead. That would make law writing and following easier. And closer to the spirit of what they are trying to accomplish and what everyone wants (except you Silicon Valley O.o)

Nope, completely legal.

On these you usually can't reject them. It says

> Data processing by advertising providers including personalised advertising with profiling (Consent required for free use)

doesn't work, they don't let you unselect anything. you have to accept everything or pay.

very frustrating because especially a tech magazine like heise should really know better