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Comment by apples_oranges | Hacker News Reader

People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly. I am baffled about the crazy amount of debate and technical solutions to a problem that was solved the moment Cookies were invented. In the 1990s I suppose.

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>People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly.

Do you think you are clever? Like this ad trackers can't just switch to use local storage, fingerprinting or other methods to go around your clever solution? You can't use tech to solve this, Google, Facebook and the others will tech around your fix.

I am not being clever, but sometimes the clever people need an idiot to see what is in front of them. ;) ok tell me what are anonymous browser windows good for? Local storage is not deleted then? If yes, use that.

Sure, now train all people to use that. And then tell them how to edit their hosts file(or to install a firewall) to also block tracking embedded in apps or in the OS. And when the OS vendor goes around the firewall and the DNS by using other technology then tell the users to buy and setup some fancy router and when they invent some other tech then what ?

Much simpler, make tracking without permission illegal so everyone can benefit not only the tech people and the ones that can afford extra routers, VPNs or other tech solutions. Also not sure if private mode is 100% safe.

Problem is, there are a ton of ways that these companies track you, not just through session cookies.

Some of the methods are explained here:

https://pixelprivacy.com/resources/browser-fingerprinting/

Your argument isn't grounded in reason. Let me make another one in kind: let me just take all of the money from everyone's wallets. If anyone notices then they can just get new wallets.

That would mean getting every single cookie banner, insterstitial ad, newsletter begging screen, country selection, TOS confirmation, etc, on every single visit.

A lot of those can be blocked with e.g. ublock (the "annoyances" filters, not on by default)

Yes but apples_oranges suggested that deleting cookies was an alternative to more complex/advanced technical solutions.

That's what I do. I use Firefox, set to delete cookies, cache, and history when I close the browser, and also uBlock Origin. I close the browser frequently, often between sites, certainly before/after visiting my banking site or anything like that.

(Seriously) I don't want to be logged out.

why not, your browser or operating system remembers all your logins for you

2FA slows down the entire log-in process a non-trivial amount - even more so if it's implemented over SMS.

hm, then just use a dedicated browser for those logins? use a Firefox for logged in stuff for example, Safari for the other stuff.

Automatic logins are easily automatable to steal data from my device, me, and the people around me.

I want to be asked every time a service wants to know who's using it from my device. I want to have the option to immediately decline authorization before any information about me or my device is sent.

I want to have the option to say "no, I don't want this service to know it's me". I also want the option to say "I am <soandso>" even if really I am not <soandso>.

Not giving me that option is a disrespect of me as a user.

People use Google chrome.

Just. Don't. Care. About. Ads.

This is not productive to this conversation.

Please don't propose technical solutions for things that should be solved by law. Protection should be the default, and not up to your own cleverness vs. the cleverness of trillion dollar industries. If that is the fight you have to fight, you will lose either immediately or eventually (see also the next point).

Please don't propose technical solutions that are mostly ineffective due to the huge amount of brainpower spent on browser fingerprinting, super cookies and other means of persistence. Cookies were invented in the 90s, and the means of being more clever than those deleting cookies were invented soon after.

Please don't speak with such condescension about these topics. People might mistake your confidence to imply you are actually on to something, but if the solution to the problem was so simple it would have been solved already - and the industry behind this would be dead or pivoted away.

It's the other way around. Things with technical solution should never be solved by law. Lawmakers and law enforcement is absurdly expensive and law has unforeseen side effects, we should use that only when absolutely necessary.

We'll probably disagree on this, but I think we're well past the point where this is "absolutely necessary". Some of best engineering talent in the world is spent on engineering the internet to 1) misuse human psychological affinities to lure you in and keep you in and 2) build large profiles of you to make as much money from (1) as possible. Targeted advertising and the incentives it creates should be banned as a benefit to society.

The technical solution wasn't even tried, I will agree with you after that fails. Also for example subsidy for Firefox and other independent browsers (of Google/MS/...) could be tried. Law should be the last resort.

I'm curious what the technical solution is you're proposing. I was considering OP's context of a technical solution that's "clearing your cookies regularly". Surely that's both not sufficient (not by a long shot) and being tried at some scale [1]? So probably you mean something else, but I'm not sure what.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_browsing

First step would be making private browsing the default. Second step would be making strong, capable adblockers built-in. Third step would be something like Firefox containers, one for each domain. Fourth step could be analyzing network traffic for potentially fingerprinting information and blocking it. I am sure there is much more to think of.

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