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posted by chromas on Friday March 08 2019, @08:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the cookie-cutter dept.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/cookie-walls-dont-comply-with-gdpr-says-dutch-dpa/

Cookie walls that demand a website visitor agrees to their Internet browsing being tracked for ad-targeting as the ‘price’ of entry to the site are not compliant with European data protection law, the Dutch data protection agency clarified yesterday.

The DPA said it has received dozens of complaints from Internet users who had had their access to websites blocked after refusing to accept tracking cookies — so it has taken the step of publishing clear guidance on the issue.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday March 08 2019, @08:59PM (15 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday March 08 2019, @08:59PM (#811729)

    The DPA said it has received dozens of complaints from Internet users who had had their access to websites blocked after refusing to accept tracking cookies — so it has taken the step of publishing clear guidance on the issue.

    "To use this site, we want you to agree to these terms, which coincidentally includes us serving you cookies"
    "No"
    [disables website]
    "Waaaa"

    I mean yeah, I get that not everybody wants to be tracked, but what did you expect would happen?

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:14PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:14PM (#811741)

    The interesting part is that if you browse with javascript off, 99 times out of 100 the contents of the site that you wanted to access appears anyway, with the cookie banner at the top/bottom of the screen asking the "agree" question.

    In which case you can read the content, and never agree or disagree to their ask.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Friday March 08 2019, @09:22PM (2 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 08 2019, @09:22PM (#811752) Journal

      For a while some sites were using some kind of script that detected that you had blocked most of their 3rd party scripts and put up a big white page with something like: Something has prevented this page from loading.

      But if I then disabled ALL javascript, the page showed up just fine.

      Another trick: sometimes a site appears in a useable way by: View --> Page Style --> No Style; thus disabling all CSS.

      It is truly sad that this is becoming an arms race.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:56PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:56PM (#811772)

        I just block them with the ublock origin element blocker. It works fine.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday March 08 2019, @10:25PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Friday March 08 2019, @10:25PM (#811788)

          Yes, I concur- I do all of the above- most browsing with javascript off, often have to disable CSS, and use lots of blockers including ublock0 and umatrix when I'm in the mood (it's awesome though). Every now and then I come across a site that refuses to display anything but a banner saying "please enable javascript". We need much finer control over what the browser's javascript interpreter is allowed to do. Sometimes I use a proxy, or "in private" browsing mode, but it's pretty rare.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:22PM (#811784)

      If the site in question has some interest I just right-click and block the banner with ublock Origin and never seen again.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:28PM (#811789)

      You hit the nail on the head.
      I don't allow scripts of any kind much less JS. I get that "Let us set our cookie!" drivel all the time. I simply scroll past it & read the content anyway.
      If the site refuses to serve up the content then I simply get a search engine cache of the plain text of the page & read it that way.
      You have *no* valid reason to put a cookie on my machine unless I've got an account with you. If the only reason is to track & market to me then you can KMMFA. Don't like it? Tough. Put up a paywall to keep me out. I'll just get my news elsewhere.
      "Butbutbutbut! How will they survive if they can't set a cookie? ZOMG! Won't someone think of their starving children?"
      The same way they survived when they sold newspapers laid open flat on a news stand so passers by could read the front page for free. It enticed them to buy a copy to get more of the story, otherwise that potential customer went somewhere else to get their news.
      You can make the front page worth of stuff free for non-cookie-allowing people, but that just gives us the bits we needed anyway. 90% of the story will be in the first paragraph with the "meat & potatoes" getting spread over a zillion different pages inside. In the digital age the "teaser paragraph" might entice us to allow the cookie to read more, but then it ALSO might prove to us that your publication is nothing but click bait shit that needs to be flushed.
      I just go to the news feed service of my search engine & read plain text caches of all the news that interests me.
      "But but but, but you could subscribe to OUR RSS feeds & get the stories delivered that way!"
      Which would mean letting you set a cookie. What part of "anonymous" did you not understand?
      *Wicked, Evil grin*

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @08:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @08:24AM (#811968)

      I'm not sure if the people in this thread are browsing the same web as me. I browse with JS=off by default, and I'd say about 60% of the sites I hit are broken and unusable, or only partially usable. Of course, most of them are of little value, and I close the tab and don't think about it too much.

    • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday March 09 2019, @06:01PM

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 09 2019, @06:01PM (#812072) Journal

      There are people that don't browse with scripts off?
      .
      What do they do after their computer mysteriously slows down to the point of unusability?
      .
      (It's not like they can go buy a new one with an empty bank account)

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday March 08 2019, @09:20PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 08 2019, @09:20PM (#811748) Journal

    It's a matter of perspective.

    The web site owner thinks it is okay to track you all around the internet and dig into every detail of your life.

    The web site visitor does not think that is okay.

    I agree with the web site visitor. If the web site owner wanted to add binding terms that they could sneak in the middle of the night and steal my and my family members' vital organs, you would probably think that is unacceptable as a condition of being able to visit the web site. I simply see the tracking thing as having gone way, way too far and completely unacceptable. If you want to put ads in front of my eyes you don't get to track every detail of my life in order to do so. If you can't find a way to make money ethically (and I think that's a fair word) then goodbye.

    I already routinely pass up web sites that fail to function because I block too much of their JavaScript. And I am usually okay with enabling some of the JS. But some sites want to send me JS from dozens (yes really!) of 3rd party sites. And as I enable more JS rows in uMatrix then even more and more want to load.

    Just NO THANKS !

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Snow on Friday March 08 2019, @09:23PM

      by Snow (1601) on Friday March 08 2019, @09:23PM (#811753) Journal

      I'm with you on that. I'll enable a couple sources for javascript (especially if it's from their own domain). But as soon as javascript is calling javascript, I say fuck that and move on.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:35AM (#811861)

      If the web site owner wanted to add binding terms that they could sneak in the middle of the night and steal my and my family members' vital organs, you would probably think that is unacceptable as a condition of being able to visit the web site.

      Looks like we've found our starting point for negotiations.

  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 08 2019, @09:23PM

    by Arik (4543) on Friday March 08 2019, @09:23PM (#811755) Journal
    If they don't feel like providing a website, that's up to them. The rest of us shouldn't be forced to pretend they have done so, when they have not.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:36PM (#811767)

    The agency is saying going against the obvious spirit of the law forcing sites to offer a choice to be or not to be tracked does not go.
    It's pretty candid but it makes sense. The sites are the ones acting in bad faith.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by jb on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:26AM

    by jb (338) on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:26AM (#811915)

    not everybody wants to be tracked

    Nobody wants to be tracked: tracking is desirable for exactly zero users.

    The real question is about willingness (consent), not desirability.

    To mean anything, consent has to be informed. Since the average Internet user (the proverbial "man on the Clapham omnibus") has no idea how cookies can be used against him and no "cookie wall" ever explains it in any depth (as to do so would be to encourage everyone to click "No"), it is reasonable to infer that the consent was not informed and therefore meaningless.

    I haven't read the DPA ruling, but I suspect that was their reasoning -- it would be under any sane legal system.

    At least two workable solutions exist, either: (a) serve up the same ads to everyone (like most websites did before the current fad of spying on one's users came into fashion), accept a lower conversion rate on ads & counter that by making your content more desirable so that overall volume makes up for the dip in conversion rate; or (b) find a business model that doesn't include selling advertising space or user data (there are many such models to choose from; none are quite as "easy" as the dastardly practice of treating your users as resources to be exploited, but then again, running a legitimate business at a profit is not supposed to be easy ... otherwise everyone would be doing it and there would be no candidates left to hire as employees).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @10:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @10:53PM (#812162)

    Right Click -> Block Element -> Carry On Your Day