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from the continuous-enthusiastic-affirmative-consent dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Websites may not present visitors with a pre-checked box that signals consent to the storage of HTTP cookies on their devices, according to a ruling [PDF] handed down on Tuesday by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
The decision follows from the German Federation of Consumer Organizations' challenge of German company Planet49's use of a pre-ticked checkbox to obtain permission to place cookies on the devices of players of its online lottery game.
[...]In March, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, who advises the court, said Planet49 failed to obtain valid consent when it presented online lottery players with a pre-selected checkbox.
"[R]equiring a user to positively untick a box and therefore become active if he does not consent to the installation of cookies does not satisfy the criterion of active consent," Szpunar said in his opinion.
"In such a situation, it is virtually impossible to determine objectively whether or not a user has given his consent on the basis of a freely given and informed decision. By contrast, requiring a user to tick a box makes such an assertion far more probable."
[...]The court also makes clear that websites must disclose how long cookies will persist and whether or not third parties will be able [to access] those cookies. This will require existing websites serving European visitors to make code changes to display those cookie parameters.
The cookie consent crackdown comes as third-party cookies are increasingly being blocked by default. Between Apple's Intelligent Tracking Protection in Safari's WebKit engine and Mozilla's Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox, regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act, and ad blockers, internet users may actually secure a bit of privacy amid the global surveillance panopticon – unless Google manages to undermine hard-won protections through its suite of Privacy Sandbox proposals.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 03 2019, @12:38AM
I'm not a fan of the EU or it's courts, but I'm 250% with them on the GDPR and people's privacy. Screw all of the corporates who view us as chattel to be farmed for profit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday October 03 2019, @12:43AM (10 children)
So tired of websites that won't allow me to view their content unless I let them set cookies, or show ads.
Dear whomever:
Your business model is broken, and you don't get to track me. Not my problem. I can continue my life just fine without your probable clickbait headline. Not so sure about you.
Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 03 2019, @01:06AM (8 children)
I came across a sire recently that wouldn't even let me view the content if I didn't log in. Weird.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday October 03 2019, @01:27AM (6 children)
Getting across sires is always hard.
Approaching weird royalty longitudinally is so much easier. (grin)
(I know, I know. There will come a time when I'll actually stop making fun of your broken keyboard... but I couldn't resist this one. Apologies)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 03 2019, @02:24AM (5 children)
Crikey! I hadn't even seen that.
It is this cheap Microsoft wireless keyboard, it seriously keeps skipping ky presses and sometimes keys get stuck like thissssssssssss.
I should have spent more and got a gooder one. See? It even messes up my grammer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Arik on Thursday October 03 2019, @04:40AM (4 children)
Which is quite often the keyboard. The only more common problem area is the user.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Webweasel on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:58AM (3 children)
This is why I have an original Das Keyboard from around 2008. It's reliable and you can beat a man to death with it. Win win.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:43AM (2 children)
Took me about 4 years to destroy it.
Booze and women. The one-two punch from Hell.
I'm currently shopping for a motherboard with ECC support and PS2 support /and/ support for a currently available processor. Got any recommendations?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @03:47PM (1 child)
The newest motherboards that support the new Ryzen chips all have ECC, so just find one of those with a PS/2 port.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday October 04 2019, @04:16AM
But new Ryzen chips do not.
Yeah, I went down this line of thought before. There are gamer motherboards with ps/2 and ecc support but no CPUs compatible with the motherboard support ECC.
Apparently, however, USB actually supports n-key rollover, even if most USB keyboards do not. So I might give up the PS/2 port and just be very careful which keyboard I choose.
Then pay through the nose for a Coffee Lake.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:25AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 03 2019, @02:41PM
For Firefox and derivatives, dismiss this overlay add-on works most of the time. https://github.com/JustOff/dismiss-the-overlay [github.com] I'm unsure what versions of Firefox it works on, I've only installed it on Basilisk.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @01:51AM
Me should be allowed to devour ALL the COOKIES, since they start with the letter C. A round donut with one bite out of it also looks like a C, but it's not as good as cookie. And the moon, the moon sometimes looks like a C -- But you can't eat that!
Me think I eat all the cookies now, including HTTP cookies.
Sincerely,
Cookie Monster
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @03:36AM (2 children)
They insist on leaving cookies?
Fine. Let em.
Then flush 'em as soon as you leave.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday October 03 2019, @05:47AM
Why wait so long? I allow, and immediately flush, and then block, and ban, burn and raze. Works for me.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SpockLogic on Thursday October 03 2019, @11:49AM
Cookie AutoDelete works for me.
Just set it and forget it.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Bot on Thursday October 03 2019, @04:51AM (11 children)
I must be repeating myself, but, car analogy time.
You are the mayor of a city in the beginning of 20th century, and those newfangled cars start to roam the streets. What do you do to secure the streets?
A. require all cars to have proper working brakes.
B. require all home owners to put some bales of hay on the street so that cars out of control smash into it and the driver does not hurt self much.
The second is the most impractical AND unfair. It is also the EU solution to the problem of cookies. The correct solution would be to RETURN to the old browser's acceptance of cookies, which needed the user to explicitly authorize them. A STANDARD, NO COST measure implemented by a handful of navigators' devs, instead of MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of sites requiring update and everybody in the fucking planet at risk of getting in trouble with the regulation of a single political entity. EU sucks in many others way but this one is one of the most exemplary. Byzantium 2.0
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @07:53AM (3 children)
Analogy is a dangerous instrument. One shouldn't make policies based solely on analogy.
(Score: 4, Touché) by FatPhil on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:21AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 03 2019, @02:45PM
Mmmmm - Dremel omelette? Sounds interesting . . .
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:32PM
> One shouldn't make policies based solely on analogy.
Don't worry, policies are the result of powerful enough interests on corrupt enough bureaucrats.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:19AM (1 child)
Judging from your comment, it seems you like ludicrously inaccurate analogies, so let me add my own:
A town finds that after the introduction of guns, people like to shoot other people for fun.
Now there are two possibilities: Either allow to shoot other people unless they signed a paper stating they don't want to be shot, or only allow to shoot people if they signed a paper that says they are OK with being shot.
The second one is the EU decision on cookies.
Note that despite being ludicrously inaccurate, my analogy is less inaccurate than yours.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:28PM
You are discussing the current story, I was discussing the original EU idea of needing every single site to justify its use of cookies, no matter if they are e.g. only session ones set up by the CMS itself to allow login into personalized areas.
I don't care if actual consent makes sense or not in the context of a retarded scheme, because the result is still retarded.
- "This car has square wheels"
- "Yes but we want to add a rearview mirror"
- "OK, but, what about the wheels?"
- "Are you against the usefulness of rearview mirrors?"
- "What the he... hey are you in the EU commission by chance?"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:35AM (3 children)
> RETURN to the old browser's acceptance of cookies
There are many ways to track, of which cookies is only one. Your solution would fix only a small subset of the problem.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:19PM (2 children)
mine is not a solution to tracking. Mine is an approach to allow/reject cookies that is simpler and saner than rewriting the web. Now they want actual consent? phone the web designer. Again. They will stop here? I don't think so.
People are becoming liable for having set up a POTENTIAL tracking system, while the actual tracking system, alias the browser/site interaction, is not affected.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday October 04 2019, @08:40AM (1 child)
> mine is not a solution to tracking.
This is exactly my point. The law pertains to any tracking, not just to cookies per se. GDPR requires consent before personally identifiable data can be stored. So while this ruling was specifically to do with check boxes the law pertains to any form of tracking.
> while the actual tracking system, alias the browser/site interaction, is not affected.
This is not true. If a web site tracks you *by any means* without consent, then the website owners are in breach of GDPR.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 04 2019, @09:33PM
You are looking at WHAT gets used for tracking, I am talking about WHO and WHERE the tracking happens.
As you put it, just logging the access to a website is in breach of the GDPR because you collect the IP referrer and info on the client, and some javascript resources loaded or not yield even more info.
Let me repeat.
THE SITE DOES NOT TRACK ANYTHING. THE CLIENT AND THE SERVER DO. THE GDPR WANTS SITES TO BE REWRITTEN.
You see the problem? The tracking must be stop at the CLIENT SOFTWARE and the SERVER SOFTWARE by disallowing things permitted by the current protocols. If the website wants to track the client, it will have to restrict the access to the resource.
All of this is moot because tracking will continue, it is too useful in too many ways to too many powerful people.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 03 2019, @02:56PM
Tracking cookies are wrong. I might even go so far as to say "evil", but I would risk sounding like the nemesis of rational thought, who thinks that I am evil.
When I bought a newspaper, the publisher knew nothing about me. Absolutely nothing. I walked up to the news stand, plopped down 35 cents (or so) and carried away my copy of the newspaper. If I SUBSCRIBED to the newspaper, then the publisher knew who I was, and where I lived, but that was about all he knew.
Television, radio, or internet, the publishers are entitled to no more information about me, than a newspaper publisher. Doesn't need to know my age, gender, work history, relatives, military record, police record, what car I drive, or ANYTHING. Take a micro-payment, anonymously, and our deal is done. I read your published material, and go my way. I may be back, if I thought your material was worth the micro-payment. But, it's none of your business whether I come back or not. Just put your wares up for sale, and let me decide, on a daily basis if it is worth a half-cent, or a dollar. I'll PROBABLY not buy, but, you never know until I make the purchase.
The only problem with that plan, is, who processes the micro-payment. I don't really think that I want Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft, or any other payment agents knowing where I go, and what I do. I might go along with Paypal, since I already have a Paypal account. I DO NOT want my bank knowing all this stuff about me.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday October 04 2019, @03:57AM
By using a browser that saves cookies, you already consented to save any cookies a site sends you. Don't consent to cookies? Don't save them when a site sends them.
Just like how clients are free to not request or render ads ("ad blocking"), clients are free to not save cookies. Asking websites to provide a checkbox is pointless, stupid, and practically speaking naive.
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