Europe’s cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it. (www.politico.eu)
from Zerush@lemmy.ml to privacy@lemmy.ml on 22 Sep 20:11
https://lemmy.ml/post/36523021

The European Commission aims to reform the EU’s cookie consent rules that have cluttered websites with intrusive banners asking for permission to track user data[^4]. The initiative seeks to streamline data protection while maintaining privacy safeguards through centralized consent mechanisms[^4].

Cookie consent banners emerged from the ePrivacy Directive (Cookie Law) and GDPR requirements, which mandate websites obtain explicit user permission before collecting non-essential data through cookies[^17]. Current rules have led to widespread implementation of pop-up notices that interrupt user experience and often employ confusing interfaces.

The proposed changes reflect growing recognition that the existing approach has “messed up the internet” while failing to provide meaningful privacy protection[^4]. Rather than requiring individual consent on every website, the Commission is exploring solutions like centralized consent management to reduce banner fatigue while preserving user privacy rights.

[^4]: Ground News - Europe’s cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it.

[^17]: Transcend - Cookie Consent Banner Best Practices: Optimizing Your Consent Management Experience

#privacy

threaded - newest

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 22 Sep 20:15 next collapse

🍾 🎆

ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 22 Sep 20:25 next collapse

The law didn’t mess up the internet, asshole business owners with their bullshit malicious compliance (and spineless devs enabling them) messed up the internet.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 22 Sep 20:33 next collapse

Yes, because of this i skip it, blocking anyway all the crap and cookies I don’t want, as also these cookie advices, only it is annoying because it last some seconds before these got skipped by the filterlist.

jlow@discuss.tchncs.de on 22 Sep 21:01 collapse

This works for a lot of sites:

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/consent-o-matic/

communism@lemmy.ml on 22 Sep 20:39 next collapse

It wouldn’t be hard to add a clause mandating that websites provide an easy-to-access “reject all” button that actually rejects all cookies.

chgxvjh@hexbear.net on 22 Sep 21:12 next collapse

Arguably e-privacy and gdpr require a reject all button.

comrade_twisty@feddit.org on 22 Sep 21:30 next collapse

Too many websites like almost all US local news outlets and businesses like Home Depot just block all EU and Swiss IP addresses, which really sucks for a multitude of reasons.

lemming@sh.itjust.works on 22 Sep 22:47 next collapse

Unless I’m very mistaken rejecting all cookies must not take more clicks than accepting them. Too bad nobody enforces that…

socsa@piefed.social on 23 Sep 22:30 collapse

The law should have a bounty for reporting violations and it will basically enforce itself.

KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz on 23 Sep 02:07 next collapse

I’m seeing more and more of this “pay to reject” thing and it’s really annoying me

ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org on 23 Sep 10:32 next collapse

I’m pretty sure the law already said that the reject button cannot be more convoluted to access than the accept button, corporate websites just couldn’t care less

renormalizer@feddit.org on 23 Sep 14:21 collapse

But even when they do, I feel that, after rejecting, I get the same banner again the next time I visit the site. I bet that doesn’t happen when you accept tracking.

ShortN0te@lemmy.ml on 22 Sep 21:22 collapse

Yep, there even was a standard that would have been sufficient, Do Not Track. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track

HairyHarry@lemmy.world on 22 Sep 21:28 next collapse

This! A thousand times THIS!

This is also evidence they never wanted to implement user protection.

wizzor@sopuli.xyz on 22 Sep 22:02 next collapse

For the life of me I do not understand how this was not all it took.

nuggie_ss@lemmings.world on 23 Sep 08:29 collapse

💲 and 🐑

mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 22 Sep 22:33 collapse

Even worse, many data agencies will use the Do Not Track flag as an additional datapoint to add to your fingerprint.

This shit should be mandated, with strict “the company has been burned to the ground and the ashes have been salted” levels of penalties for violating it.

Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 22 Sep 20:43 next collapse

Ublock Origin’s “Cookie Notice Filter + Annoyances Filter” combo stays winning as always :)

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 22 Sep 21:08 collapse

Yes, the Vivaldi blocker use also the same filter, but as said, it skip the popup only after an second, when it finished to load. This filterlist is also used by almost all adblocker too (Adguard, Adblock Plus, uBO lite and others more, same as also specific extensions, like ‘I don’t Care About Cookies’ and others more. This is because these pop ups, apart of anoying, are useless.

chgxvjh@hexbear.net on 22 Sep 21:03 next collapse

Just make companies respect the do not track flag I can select in the browser.

Denmark (currently presiding over meetings in the Council of the European Union) suggested in May to drop consent banners for cookies collecting data “for technically necessary functions”

That already doesn’t require consent

or “simple statistics."

Also doesn’t require consent, when the statistics are anonymous.

m33@lemmy.zip on 22 Sep 21:10 next collapse

It’s funny, this is how you see how politicians act when they are personally involved.

Cookies and banners annoys the shit out of them, so they actually do something.

They don’t care about the internet.

Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 22 Sep 21:59 next collapse

Be sure to add ‘I still don’t care about cookies’ extension to your browsers. Edge - Chrome - Firefox

hubobes@sh.itjust.works on 22 Sep 22:26 next collapse

You better us Consentomatic: consentomatic.au.dk

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 00:10 collapse

Yes, but it use anyway the filters which already are in the adblocker (Easy List Cookie List and some others). I’ve this filters not only in the adblocker, also in the trackerblcker, so fhe cookie advice is bskipped, even in adblock whitelisted pages.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/aa1de51c-1041-46d5-87c4-dafc16836274.png">

brb@sh.itjust.works on 24 Sep 09:08 collapse

AFAIK these filters merely hide the pop ups, meaning you are agreeing to the tracking. Consent-o-matic on the other hand actually clicks “No” on them.

Correct me if I’m wrong

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 09:32 collapse

The filter block all cookies which can be desactivated in the consent menu, same do the consent-o-matic extension. The rest is anyway blocked by the tracking blocker, site permission settings in Vivaldi and, in my case, also by the filters in the Portmaster which I use. If you also use the Site Bleacher Extension (somewhat outdated, but still extreme effective), Cookie-autodelete, CookieBro or similar (removes automatically cookies, local storages, IndexedDBs, service workers, cache storages, filesystems and webSQLs after leaving the page), “you never has visited this page”. Means, there are enough manners out there which you can use to show them the middle finger and which make this cookie consent pop up useless.

jokeyrhyme@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 06:54 next collapse

Instead, ban the collection of non-essential data, and also ban the targeting of advertisements based on user profiles/history

Only select advertisements to display based on the immediate context, exactly like printed newspapers and magazines

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 14:52 collapse

That is the right way, ads are a legit manner to create incommings if they are contextual, but not if they are abusive and surveillance based, tracking and logging the user activity. As in YT, it’s not the problem to have ads in the page or as banner at the border of an video, but it is, that the interrupt an conciert documental with several no scippable long ads, popups to use Premium, clickbaits and other crap, which serve nobody, less the author. In this case using an adblocker is mere selfdefense and legit to cut this crap and nags. A good manner is eg. how Bandcamp do it, there you can freely listen almost every song or album, without ads, and there you can buy and download it when you want, paying direct to the artist and Bandcamp an revenue. Or as Vivaldi does, using afiliate links and search engines added by default, which pay an revenue to Vivaldi, if the user use these, who is free to delete those which he don’t use. These and similar methodes are a legit and ethical way to create incommings, without putting in risk the right of privacy of the user, selling his data.

irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 23 Sep 06:58 next collapse

Problem is not the law, but that the companies implemented it in as annoying of a way as possible to get people pissed off about the law and force it to be dropped, or for what actually happened which is that it’s too much work to not opt-in to the cookies which essentially makes it opt-out not in.

And the idea to remove the requirements for “simple statistics” or whatever terminology they use will just get abused by using other illicit tracking tech to link the cookies to uniquely identify a person anyway. So it will effectively make the popups unnecessary in any circumstances and still allow tracking for marketing and surveillance.

aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 23 Sep 08:30 next collapse

Some websites do it right. They have a “reject all” button, and that’s that. But then there are others where you have to deselect a whole shit load of checkboxes just to reject the fucking cookies. Sometimes they even have a “Pay to reject” shit. WTF. Ugh.

quick_snail@feddit.nl on 23 Sep 18:43 collapse

That’s illegal. Report it to the government. Google got fined millions of euros just for making it two clicks on YouTube.

quick_snail@feddit.nl on 23 Sep 18:42 next collapse

The law requires them to make a one button option to deny all.

Google got fined millions of dollars for making it two clicks. And then they changed it to one click “reject all” after that.

irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 23 Sep 21:33 collapse

Right, but not all have fixed that. I still see lots of cases where I have to turn off several options individually. Though these could be sites outside of the EU jurisdiction, so they just don’t care, or sites that make enough money off of the tracking data, that the fines would be insignificant even if the EU were to get around to fining them.

And again the comment stands that it’s not the law, but the implementations that are bad. The law requires it to be simple, but that’s not what was implemented.

quick_snail@feddit.nl on 23 Sep 23:02 collapse

The fines are not insignificant. Report it to the government.

Valmond@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 18:56 collapse

Ghostery is a fantastic Firefox plugin. No more stupid questions.

nuggie_ss@lemmings.world on 23 Sep 08:27 next collapse

The fuck? The flagrant stealing and selling of user data is what messed up the internet.

Europe at least is trying to fix it.

Why are people so stupid? Is it something in the water?

NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 09:26 next collapse

fluoride. /s

timhayes1991@lemmy.zip on 23 Sep 13:04 collapse

Fluoride? You mean TDazzle?

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 14:28 collapse

It’s mainly the US companies, there don’t exist something like GDPR or right of privacy with free hand for big corporations and surveillance advertising. The People ther are too stupid to see it as a risk (don’t forget they voted Trump for the second time, showing that they are stupid as bricks). The problem is that the EU still depends to much on the US hegemony in the Internet. This is the first thing to change, using EU alternatives which exist and often are even superior, to gain sovereighnity.

ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 23 Sep 15:24 collapse

The US dollar and economy are about to crash. This power can only go so far. I just hope the EU has enough oligarchy independence to sieze some of the marketshare when it happens so maybe there will be some place left with decent Internet regulations.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 19:06 collapse

It’s this the problemm tecnically the EU is on the high, but as always policy, burocrathy and the users themself to use itThe last the most difficult to convince the people to use EU products, insteat of US ones. Everybody using Whatscrap, Fakebook, X, search with Googke, buy on Amazon, use Kindle, M$ Office,…not out of necessity, but out of ignorance and habit.

imdc@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 09:11 next collapse

Think they can ban the “pay, or let us track you” tactic I’ve been seeing pooping up too? That’s fucking extortion.

SliceableObstacle@jlai.lu on 23 Sep 13:46 next collapse

That’s the only honest way to deal with it. They need money.

imdc@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 17:02 collapse

If extortion is the honest way to do something, a bigger step back is needed.

3abas@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 18:30 next collapse

Extortion is a stretch… They provide content or service for a price, the price is either money you pay or money advertisers pay…

I would not use those sites, but that’s my decision, they aren’t twisting my arm to force me to read their shitty articles…

SliceableObstacle@jlai.lu on 23 Sep 18:33 collapse

I’d rather not go to a website because I won’t pay, than refuse their cookies and have them track me anyway through “legitimate reason”.

If you feel extorted you may need to get off the internet and breathe some fresh air. I’m sure you can live juste fine without going to those extorting website.

Quality cost money to produce. If we want to prevent the massive enshitification we may have to question the way we consume internet and re-think the “everything is free” mantra.

Opisek@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 17:46 next collapse

It is already illegal, but nobody is doing anything about that.

Valmond@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 18:54 collapse

Bet the CNIL is.

Raiderkev@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 17:59 collapse

That’s gross man. Where’s it pooping up so I can avoid it?

HubertManne@piefed.social on 23 Sep 16:50 next collapse

This is like one of the only banner type things I like.

[deleted] on 23 Sep 18:57 next collapse

.

kepix@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 19:03 next collapse

just use consentomatic plugin

interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 21:49 next collapse

This is like when legislatures where made to ban plastic straws by the oil and plastic companies.
They knew the backlash would teach legislature to stop meddling in their affairs.

PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 21:53 next collapse

Just mandate a single button to reject all cookies and that the default be “reject all” if users skip the banner.

Ferk@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 18:17 collapse

That doesn’t work, because rejecting all cookies means it’s impossible for the page to remember whether you skipped the banner… so the result is that the banner will always show.

The real solution would be to have this be a browser / HTML standard. Similar to other permissions managed by the browser (like permission to get camera/mic, permission to send notifications, etc)… then each browser can have a way to respond to these requests for permission that we can more fully control/customize… with a UI owned by the browser that is consistent across websites and with settings that can be remembered browser-side (so the request can be automatically denied if that’s what you want).

RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip on 24 Sep 19:27 collapse

The law only concerns cookies that are not strictly necessary to provide a service.

So the cookie to remember that you denied all non-necessary cookies could be seen as necessary and thus not require your consent.

Ferk@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 09:33 collapse

@PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world said “reject all”, not “reject optional cookies” or “allow essential”. If the website offers a “reject all” button (which many do, even if that’s not mandated by the law), it actually does reject even the essential cookies. In my experience, the times I’ve chosen to press such button it always result on the banner showing again if you refresh the page.

And “Could be seen as” is subjective too. They could argue that having the banner, even if inconvenient, does not really break the website. They can also easily argue that since the point of the law was to get them to request consent then they are actually being even safer in terms of compliance by asking more.

Also, I still would rather have the possibility of no banners, not even the first time I open the page. The configuration from the browser following the standard could set a default for all websites and potentially avoid the popup to begin with. Then the responsibility would be with the browser, not the website.

RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip on 25 Sep 14:42 collapse

I still would rather have the possibility of no banners, not even the first time I open the page.

Oh that’s entirely possible, even with the current law as it is. All the developer has to do is to stop using cookies for anything that is not related to the functionality of the website.

But of course, the adtech bros won’t give up on their precious tracking, so they’d rather try and shift the blame with an empty argument along the lines of “Hey, the bad EU law is forcing us to bother you.”

Ferk@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 14:50 collapse

Yeah, that’s why I’m saying that the current solution does not work. It’s why I was proposing a new standard that is enforced by law and that does not depend on subjective definitions of what’s “essential” so anyone who does only want to allow certain purposes can opt in/out of certain cookies without the hassle.

socsa@piefed.social on 23 Sep 22:27 next collapse

The idea that there are “essential” cookies is what broke the law. There is no such thing, there are only cookies which would mildly confuse the average user if they weren’t present. People should still have the option to opt out of th se cookies as well.

groet@feddit.org on 24 Sep 00:51 collapse

That is factually incorrect. Many websites would literally stop working. Not “mildly confuse”, but “be unusable”.

You ever logged in to a website? That’s a cookie. Ever used an online shopping cart? That’s a cookie. Ever changed a websites language in a dropdown? That’s a cookie.

All these cookies are first party. There are also essential third party cookies for thing like SSO (“sign in with google/Facebook/github/etc”)

Tell your browser to reject 100% of cookies and tell me how much fun that is.

“Legitimate Interest” is the bullshit term. Why does an ad company have a legitimate interest to my data? That should be removed from the law.

Ferk@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 18:03 collapse

“Essential” is still very vague. All purposes should be categorized. If used for session/identity, then it should be categorized as “session/identity”, there should not be a category defined as “essential”.

You can also make a karaoke page that does not work without access to the microphone, but still the browser has a dedicated permission request for this, it does not get mixed up into a bucket of generic “essential” permissions only because that page doesn’t work without using the microphone.

There should be a whole HTML standard similar to the Notification.requestPermission() (which requests permission to send browser notifications), but with a granular set of permissions for storage of data for different purposes.

And this should be a browser standard, not a custom popup in the logic of the website itself that will be styled differently on each page, allowing all sort of anti-patterns. I should be able to control, from the browser, what the defaults should be for each individual category of data, without having to click through every single website I visit individually. The UI to request for consent should be controlled by the browser, not by the page.

funkycarrot@discuss.tchncs.de on 24 Sep 20:33 next collapse

I can hear the lobbyists (both civil society and big tech, mainly the big tech ones) marching towards Brussels right now. This will be as heated as the Digital Markets Act.

Fighting is expected to flare up again next year, when the Commission wants to present an advertising-focused piece of legislation called the Digital Fairness Act. The executive has stated that the rulebook will help protect consumers online, including from manipulative design or unfair personalization.

Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 21:53 collapse

Just use Ghostery with never consent? I hardly ever see those things. Other extensions are available.