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Comment by paulus_magnus2 | Hacker News Reader

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paulus_magnus2

This site shows a rare glimpse to what is happening underneath that enables "free" web

[1] -> View List of Cookies Used on this Site

[1] https://www.cycleworld.com/consent.php?redirect=https%3a%2f%...

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Your link doesn't work for me - I get redirected to the article.

Instead, I had to go to the main cycleworld.com page, scroll to the footer, and click "GPDR" to reach:

https://www.cycleworld.com/sites/cycleworld.com/consent.php?...

27 "Necessary" cookies for CDN control, cookie consent, CSRF protection...and other less 'necessary' things, some from Linkedin or Pinterest and other social tracking sites. 10 "Preferences" cookies for storing your preferences... mostly from ad networks. 34 "Statistics" cookies for analytics. 84 "unclassified".

Two hundred and fifty one marketing cookies.

I particularly like how, while some cookies have reasonable session-only or month-long expiry dates, and many others last for 1 or 2 years, the _nauid cookie from nrich.ai is set to expire in 1000 years. Wouldn't want to miss that opportunity if you see my computer on cycleworld.com today and, in the far-off year of 2978, I connect this centuries-old relic to a different server that's using nrich.ai.

After all, you might be able to sell an ad for a fusion-powered hyperspace hoverbike if you know this computer looked at a page about electric motorcycles 900 years ago.

Thanks to GDPR this is no longer a rare glimpse, as a lot of sites are publishing something similar to this, or offering opt-outs. And while this list is long, it is most definitely not extreme.

Yes, all sites from this media group is a cookie hell, https://twitter.com/cyberfart/status/1004822971683352576

While it entirely put me off going further into the site, I did look through some of the cookies listed - a few have 68-year expiry dates.

I doubt I'll even be using the same architecture in 68 years, let alone the same laptop or browser!

Ha! 68 years, try 7981! G_ENABLED_IDPS [x3] from disqus.com/pinterest.ie/stumbleupon.com states expiry of 95779 months.

One of the Unclassified cookes _nauid has its expirey set to 1000 years...

Personally I already found the "Necessary" category long but acceptable. If I had been able to choose "only necessary" I might have kept the tab open...

If one would like to, it can be considered a list of sites to block cookies from ;)

Wow... great insight.. didn't check that

Pretty ridiculous I must admit, but what do you propose is the alternative? Micropayments is a utopian fantasy that would never play out in reality and pay walls eliminate what makes the web valuable to so many people.

I would never have run across this (actually pretty interesting) article and information if it was hidden behind a paywall because I don't own a motorcycle.

This kind of serendipitous exposure to a diverse set of viewpoints and information would not be possible outside of a free-yet-cookie-filled internet.

I know this sentiment will be unpopular around here, but personally, my concerns around privacy begin and end with governments. X profit motivated company wants to track my browsing activity to sell me consumer products in exchange for paying their (already barely paid) writers? Go right ahead. If you annoy me enough I'll just turn off cookies.

You know, if it was restricted _purely_ to advertising, I suspect that most people could live with this. However when they then start to use this tracking information for pricing discrimination people start to get twitchy. When you start to use it for political purposes, including political advertising, people start to get twitchy. When they start to use it for credit rating scores, etc, etc.

> people start to get twitchy

You mean all the people who don't have a facebook account?

Advertising is fine, just don't do anything that violates privacy. For 100 years or so advertisements have not needed to remember your face... We just need to go back to before this one specific thing was instituted.

"Micropayments is a utopian fantasy that would never play out in reality"

Care to provide some arguments?

The problem right now I see in the lack of an easy to use service with reasonable fees. And the mindset of the people that why pay for things voluntarily? But Wikipedia for example shows, that there allready enough people thinking different. So we just lack the micropayment service

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