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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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Cookie Walls Don’t Comply with GDPR, Says Dutch DPA
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:14PM (7 children)
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)
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.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @09:56PM (1 child)
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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