This is a jaw-drop moment for me every single time I observe someone else using the web and quickly clicking "accept" on every single cookie banners that pops up, without ever wasting a second even reading what they're accepting. It's mind boggling to me. Sure, I'm in IT, so surely I'm more aware of data mining, profiling, and other privacy-related aspects. But in many cases, you could just click "reject" and the banner would also disappear...
To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning.
Some variant on "reject" takes more effort like 70% of the time. Which is on purpose, of course. The ones that aren't maliciously-complying have a "necessary only" button that insta-closes it, but tons pretend that you might want to allow some spying but not all of it and make you go through another screen if you don't just "accept all".
> To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning.
Then it'd be possible to default it to "nope" (Firefox, and perhaps Safari, might do this) or to allow a "never, anywhere" setting the first time the question is asked, and malware and spyware vendors know that'd mean a much larger proportion of denials.
I think it's absolutely fair and unlikely to be illegal to use a cookie to remember cookie preferences. Unless the cookie value was not yes/no, but something like a precise timestamp that could be used for uniquely identifying.
But of course, designing the system that pushes people to make this sort of decision was absolutely intentional.
So even when it's incompetence, it's still malicious, just in a way that obscures the explicit decision-making that led to the result.
Naturally in a camera meeting with a "don't tell anyone we said that" appended right before.
The marketing people in the meeting were very angry that California was "doing it to them".
Clicking those "REJECT!" buttons might make you feel empowered, but it's pointless. Just set your browser to delete all the cookies at the end of the session except for whatever sites you want to allow to 'remember' you.
The whole thing has always been a problem to be properly solved by the browser, and it's probably just the fact that Google makes the only browser that matters, that it's been foisted upon every website owner, who mostly just wants basic analytics and to track conversions from the ads they run, and isn't "selling your data."
The browser is your user agent. If it's sending any information up to web servers on every request that isn't okay with you, why are you using it?
Exactly. I use the "I don't care about cookies" extension, which rejects most cookies automatically without me having to see the popups. But even accepting cookies is fine - I'll be closing my browser soon anyway and they'll be gone.
It is known that warnings and pop-ups that show up almost all the time yield diminishing returns. I think it was named "normalization of deviation" by some folks in a blog a while ago, and I believe that name fits. If you get warned about missing https all the time, or that something might be dangerous (even though it does precisely what you want it to do), it will loose its effect by the time you actually need it.
You can argue this is malicious compliance, but if you want it to go away it would probably be easier to go for banning tracking and personalized ads altogether. Eliminate the reason for this behavior, so to speak.
There is one. It's a DNT header. Knucklehead websites ignore it.
Like it or not, the Web is a two-way street, meaning that the server end of the transaction doesn't owe the client end anything in particular unless there's some relationship in place (like a payment). It appears the "just ignore it" matches the intent of most web users, though, since an overwhelming majority of web visitors accept a bunch of spammy ads + free 'content,' and a slim minority pay for ad-free alternatives.
So do car alarms.
I'm not convinced this is a business model I want to exist. We had an internet before it, and Google, and Facebook. I'm increasingly sad we can't return to it.
The law that caused the cookie banners also says companies cannot block access to the site if the cookies are not required for the functioning of the site.
Some German news sites have broken this and have "accept or pay" and I think this leaked to news sites in other countries. Facebook even tried it.
So, sure, if DNT is true, try to make people pay. Fine by me.
Oftentimes the reject flow is substantially more annoying than the accept flow. I click reject myself when it's an option, but I can absolutely understand how people might get conditioned to click accept when clicking reject might result in more popups.
If you made a website and you said "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or sign a name, any name you wish, in my guestbook" what business is it of the government to say "No, this random person refuses to pay or sign the book, but Thom, you have to let them see all your articles anyway."
Note that I used "sign any name" as the metaphor, not "show ID," since it is trivial to not allow any important information exchange if you simply delete the cookies yourself, which is easy to configure a browser to do. The end-user has the choice, if it's so important to them, to configure their browser. Even Chrome can be configured for which sites to allow cookies, which to disallow, and which to clear when the browser closes (the smart choice, since accepting them and throwing them away soon after is the undetectable option that accomplishes your main aim).
However the UK does have its own GDPR regulation (see: <https://www.gov.uk/data-protection>), though my understanding is that it may be less strict in requiring equivalence between "accept" and "reject" actions. (I may be wrong on this.)
UK sites accessed from the EU would have to be under EU GDPR compliance.
What harm are you worried about?
Lack of privacy harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. It’s sort of like freedom of speech is necessary not just for journalists, but for everyone, even if you have nothing to say.
These banners handle both ePrivacy consent for cookies etc, but also GDPR Art. 6(1)(a) for processing purposes (personalised ads, measurement, audience insights, precise geolocation, even device fingerprinting).
They will fingerprint you with or without cookies. They may or not try to honor your preferences, but their "partners" will not try, and by the time you see that banner, it's all out there.
"Accept" is the close button.
This is exactly what browsers did back the 90s, they asked about every single cookie.
Then browsers got configurable options to simply accept either all cookies, no cookies, or only first party cookies (excluding third party sites unrelated to the domain you visited).
For now well over 20 years I have disabled 3rd party cookies in all browsers I use, and only in a few cases overall did I need to make exemptions.
There's a mismatch between the velocity at which people visit sites and the time it takes to navigate the cookie particulars of each site.
And, we can dismiss this as people being uninformed or lazy but the reality it is that's actually not so unreasonable. Cookies are in some ways near the bottom of the list where privacy is concerned, given everything else from breaches to search dossiers to device finger-printing to mobile device location-tracking to the ubiquity of cameras in the real world, and on and on.
The idea that we're clawing back privacy in any meaningful sense by blocking a few cookies here and there is kind of quaint.
People do not have a right (morally speaking, not legally) to access or use a service (or a website) etc without having to read/agree to the terms (applies to analog and digital).
If your terms require people to get a law degree and take a week to parse the 400 page document, then I would argue that it's a tactic to get people to sign up for the service without fully understanding it.
We need legislation that forces companies to communicate the terms in a way that an average person can comprehend.
We really need to stop companies from putting up these insanely complicated legal texts to use basic services when they could all be behind standard contracts.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”
https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSTahoe.pdf
The same point applies to most of the text. But yes, some text is specific to the service. E.g. the same doc above says in bold:
"By using the Content Caching Features of the Apple Software, you agree that Apple may download and cache such Apple Eligible Content on your Caching Enabled Mac."
I'd say that's something worth knowing if you use that OS.
any sort of elevation prompt, IF I allow them to be popups or an icon in a toolbar, should always be in the same place and not cover the page.
The default is “no”. Without explicit consent you can’t do a lot of things.
You can’t have a default yes, because how can you agree with consent but automatically to everything?
And if it’s a no, are you saying you can’t ask a user for permission to use their data for a specific purpose?
And if you can ask, that’s what we have right now.
How often do you get prompted for, say, secure DNS or HTTP? Almost never, because your browser has sane defaults and controls that. So, there you go.
P.S.: No true Scotsman spotted
What browsers would those be?
If people really cared, they’d chose reputable suppliers that sell non toxic food. If they are eating food with lead, they don’t care.
Don’t force your wordview on people through regulation
As opposed to enforcing your worldview with a lack of regulation?
Because that's precisely what's happening, with the advertisement industry enforcing their worldview through lack of compliance.
The reason this isn't done is because corporations legal departments love writing 10-100 page contracts that absolutely nobody is going to read.
For example, in The Netherlands there is a legally mandated three-day period after signing the contract for purchasing a home during which the buyer can still call off the deal.
The reasoning for this is that it is a seller's market, with demand far outnumbering supply. In practice it is very common these days to end up in a bidding war, and even forego any kind of "sale is void if home inspection turns up issues" clause. Want to think about it for a day or two before signing the biggest contract of your life? Too bad, another buyer is willing to sign today.
With the mandatory three-day waiting period you avoid buyers being locked into a contract they basically immediately regret. It gives them some time to do due diligence, reducing the risk of buying a complete lemon. The seller can ask for a similar clause to be inserted, but it is less common. After all, the only risk to the seller is getting slightly less money for it, and that's already mostly dealt with during the bidding process.
As it stands I just hit Accept on literally everything and that’s fine for me.
It already pushes the correct "Reject" button for you on a lot of sites (not all; it works based on rule lists)
There’s no way this would fly. “I didn’t read it” can’t possibly be an excuse to avoid being bound by an agreement. Every party to an agreement that flaunted its terms, even though they took advantage of the benefits granted by it, would invoke it as a defense, and it’s irrefutable. The system would completely fall apart if this happened.
There’s a balance that needs to be carefully managed here. Yes, fairness to consumers is important. But you can’t destroy the incentive to produce value in so doing.
Only engineers have trouble understanding this. It can be a reasonable defense, and it has successfully been used in courts of law many times. The law is not a machine that compiles text like code literally. Imagine someone who coerces a dying or sick person to sign an agreement they couldn’t possibly be in a reasonable state of mind to understand what they were doing -- the law can and does invalidate such “contracts”. That is the same principle behind age of consent laws. The law could theorerically (and does) invalidate “agreements” which no one is reasonably expected to read and understand.
> The law could theorerically (and does) invalidate “agreements” which no one is reasonably expected to read and understand.
I haven’t heard of a single case where an agreement was voided because “no one could reasonably be expected to understand it.” Unless the language was so impenetrable or vague that the agreement itself could not be discerned. Lawyers tend not to write such agreements.
I just visited theguardian.com to see their cookie banner. The banner says this:
> Your Privacy (`x` button to close the tab)
> US residents have certain rights with regard to the sale or sharing of personal information to third parties.
> Guardian News and Media and our partners use information collected through cookies or in other forms to improve experience on our site and pages, analyze how it is used and show personalized advertising.
> You can opt out of the sale of all of your personal information by pressing
> <button>Do not sell or share my personal information</button>
It's 3 sentences, plus a button that says "Do not sell or share my personal information". I actually don't even think this is GDPR compliant, because my layman's understanding says that GDPR consent must be presented as opt-in, rather than opt-out. (I guess they are going for CCPA/CPRA compliance?) But anyway, I would think that a reasonable person could be expected to notice a button that says "Do not sell or share my personal information" and then click it, especially when it's portrayed prominently at the bottom of the page.
Because this is there 1 millionth cookie banner, because every site and their momma has one.
Also, 90% of cookie banners are not this good. They tell you nothing, hide the "reject" button behind multiple screens, etc. At that point the consumer is trained to click accept.
This is the definition of informed consent
However, since we are discussing the banner that The Guardian website shows to US viewers, I assume they’re trying to comply with California privacy law, which does allow opt-out regarding the sale of personal information.
Also, striking an unconscionable term typically does not void the whole contract. Just the term in question.
Aside from that many of these contract have terms that might be considered substantive unconscionability - for example if terms state that what you post can be used by the company that owns the service for marketing of the company or the service I feel this would not make it through most legal systems that I feel before the attempt are not inherently corrupt.
As an example I have an email account with site A. I go to site A and log in, they suddenly spring a large new contract for me to read, I cannot get through to do what I came to do, it will take me 5 minutes to read so I click OK because I am on my way to check my email with site A. Procedurally this is not reasonable behavior.
What would be reasonable?
"Hi, we are changing our terms of service, you can see it at this link and agree. If you don't have the time right now you can do it later, but in three days you will lose access to the service unless you agree to terms."
There are however lots of other laws in the EU which may in fact make this behavior substantively unconscionable anyway. I certainly believe there would also be substantive arguments to be made in this case.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/disney-says-man-cant-su...
"Disney is trying to have a widower's wrongful death lawsuit dismissed and sent to arbitration because the man had signed up for a Disney+ account several years ago."
Now what happened was that Disney quit fighting over really bad PR. But the court challenge would have liteky succeeded.
Mozilla with their Thundermail just tried saying in their ToS that if you're mentioned at all in anything legal, you agree to pay their legal fees.
The value is derived from the people consuming the product. Placing the "incentive to produce value" above the people who presumably are the source of this value seems...misaligned.
What we need is an environment that does not give the producers asymmetric power over consumers and the products will naturally align with that.
Also, sarcasm isn’t welcome here. Please read the HN guidelines.
Ah yes, I didn't couch my post in any of the various, rampant HN-friendly versions of shitposting. I'll try to follow your example from here on out. Excellent touch citing the guidelines at me after your role in this thread, A+.
Re-reads this thread, taking notes
HN is supposed to have higher than typical standards for participation than most internet fora and is largely self policing. It’s not condescending to tell people when they are misbehaving. Nor is it condescending to explain to people the law and how things work, provided you’re not insulting them in the process. Which I’m not doing.
I find much more concerning people’s certainty of their mistaken understandings and beliefs, combined with the most ludicrous possible interpretation of other’s positions.
Or that any actual human is aware that an agreement was made (since an AI can find a checkbox nowadays or software can be configured to bypass it). One way to add balance could be to require people asking for contracts to actually treat them like real serious legal documents, show up for the signing, and figure out who they are making an agreement with.
Prinicipal-agent law predates computers by a very long time.
The law really has nothing to do with cookies, it has to do with privacy, tracking, and PII. You can absolutely save preferences and perform analytics. What you can't do is hoard data that is personally identifiable for purposes that are not obvious to the consumer.
How many requests per second are being served? How many error codes were delivered to clients? How quickly the service responded? Service logs without PII? All perfectly fine to aggregate and analyze without consent.
Good.
> and you can't run a serious website without some kind of analytics.
I don't believe you.
> Preference-storing does as well, despite any reasonable user expecting that, if they set a preference, it will be saved.
IANAL, but I'm given to understand that this is untrue.
What do you see as the harm in website owners using aggregated analytics data to improve their sites?
When was the last time you read an entire EULA before installing software?
I'm going to guess the time frame is somewhere around "never."
These are nuisance contracts designed to jade people with legalese while stealing their rights to things like class action and enforcing binding arbitration.
Standard contracts sounds like the way to go.