Hacker News Reader

Comment by richwater | Hacker News Reader

It's not the EU who makes you do that, it's the companies making the website.

They could not use cookies, they could respect DNT browser setting, they could have not abused tracking technology, and they couldmhave chosen to comply with the law in a user friendly way, instead of user-hostile way.

They didn't. That's why now there is an imperfect law.

Without the urge of the companies to track everything they can, you wouldn't have to deal with cookie banners. The only fault the EU has is that the fines for companies are far, far too low and the enforcement is too slow and rare

Good news! It's not the EU at all. The websites you visit have the following alternative options:

* Serve static content with no user-tracking.

* Serve per-user dynamic content, where

* Perform tracking that is essential to the service provided. (e.g. Recording GPS coordinates are essential to the service that Strava offers to users, so no explicit consent is required. Recording GPS coordinates is not essential to the service that Google, Facebook, or Amazon provide, so they must have consent to collect GPS coordinates.)

So if a website is displaying a banner request to track you, it's because that website has made a deliberate choice not to use the other options available.

Not only that, but you have additional options as well.

* Hide each GDPR banner, such as using a custom filter in your ad-blocker. Consent to be tracked must be explicit, and ignoring/hiding a banner is not explicit consent.

* Click the "I reject cookies" button instead. The GDPR requires that it be as easy to retract permission as it is to accept. Since the website has an "I accept cookies" button that only requires one click to complete, they must also have a "I reject cookies" button.

> Click the "I reject cookies" button instead. The GDPR requires that it be as easy to retract permission as it is to accept. Since the website has an "I accept cookies" button that only requires one click to complete, they must also have a "I reject cookies" button.

As for when that'll be a reality, they are working on that: https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/new-cooki...

Don't be angry at the EU, be angry of the owners of the website that makes it hard to say no to tracking.

The GDPR in no way requires cookie banners, that is the choice of the website you visited. Cookies required for functionality of a website do not require consent, privacy invading tracking cookies on the other hand do.

This is like blaming the government for making you look at black lungs on cigarette packages. It's not the government that's making you cough, they're just showing the result to you.

I routinely visit the same websites on a daily basis and don’t understand why I have to accept cookies to the same sites over and over again.

Shouldn’t they keep track of that?

Are you blocking cookies by default? Quite often your consent is saved in a cookie. There is of course also the possibility that the website operator is hoping that you get so annoyed that you consent to tracking sooner or later.

Your browser might be blocking third party cookies.

No, those websites chose to make you do that.

They could stop selling your data to google, Facebook, etc

Or I guess you could blame the legislation that at least makes it obvious that that’s what they’re doing?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com