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Comment by 4ad | Hacker News Reader

The EU did not make cookies an opt-in technique. The EU made irrelevant cookies opt-in. Cookies that are essential for the functioning of the service do not need a notice. If you require user accounts, you don't need to show a cookie notice. If you implement a shopping cart without user accounts, you also don't need to show a cookie notice.

Unfortunately most websites don't understand this simple idea and show the cookie notice indiscriminately (or, perhaps, they just all use cookies for tracking in which case the notice should be there).

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That’s one of the most frustrating aspects of GDPR in relation to cookies - many businesses that could happily run a site with no cookie opt-in end up implementing one anyway because that irritating pop-up gives the end user a perception of ‘handling privacy well’.

I’d be so keen for the solution to lie in the browser UX- in the same way as we currently request location information - rather than the current mish-mash of badly implemented, often disingenuous site overlays that have become the modern equivalent of the ‘enter site’ splash screen...

> That’s one of the most frustrating aspects of GDPR in relation to cookies - many businesses that could happily run a site with no cookie opt-in end up implementing one anyway because that irritating pop-up gives the end user a perception of ‘handling privacy well’.

Have you actually seen examples of that? sad...

If you're a business, you have tracking on your site. The cookie warning it's almost always warranted.

Probably most websites use Google Analytics or an alternative.

> Probably most websites use Google Analytics or an alternative.

How is this not essential though? You can't effectively run a business without some understanding of your traffic and where it's coming from. Also, you can use Google Analytics in a way that doesn't store PII.

I could run the business just fine without Google Analytics. Would just be in the dark a bit more.

I'm not associated with EU so I haven't pondered on this as much as others. My first thought is that this should really be up to the browsers and their users on what info Analytics software is able to work out just from the user being on the page.

Users should just assume that every business will absorb all available information. At least then we wouldn't see those ridiculous cookie notices everywhere.

As a web developer, I'm kinda surprised 3rd party cookies ever became a thing in the first place.

Users should just assume that every business will absorb all available information.

Users don't know what "available information" is. And frankly, not even the browser developers do - we keep discovering new ways to track people (e.g. using ETags) with features that weren't intended for that. So it's quite hard to claim the user can simply decide what to share.

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