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15 years ago people would've called it spyware.
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20 years ago people would've called it a trojan horse.

But then, by standards of two decades ago, every website that cannot legally avoid showing a GDPR popup would be classified as malware. As it should be today. Alas, standards have changed.

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> But then, by standards of two decades ago, every website that cannot legally avoid showing a GDPR popup would be classified as malware. As it should be today. Alas, standards have changed.

I don't think you've read GDPR. In Europe (at least my part), *every* organization has a GDPR policy you need to agree to. Your child's school. Summer camps. Etc. Most are also conservative and reasonable.

What's broken is the GDPR popup with a dozen "legitimate interest" toggles for spying on you.

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Funny some you can't say no, so I'm like alright guess I'm not going in
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There were no cookie popups 20 years ago.
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Err, there were, prepare to feel old "Cookie consent pop-ups first started appearing following the adoption of the ePrivacy Directive in 2002" 25 years!
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I beg to differ, there absolutely was cookie popups. We also had popup windows, popup ads, java applets that melted your cpu, and browsers with no grid. Oh, and we had Shockwave and Flash…
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I think they meant that the use of cookies for analytics/tracking, which is what triggers the popup requirement, would have been considered malicious.
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Indeed.
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Yes, let's put the Overton window back where it used to be.
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