How do you deal with endless cookies dialogues?
How do you deal with endless cookies dialogues?
This might be just EU thing, but is there an effective way to deal with endless "accept/reject cookies" dialogues?
Regardless of the politics behind, I think we can all agree that current state of practice around these dialogues is ...just awful.
Basically every site seems to use some sort of common middleware to create the actual dialogue and it's rare case when they are actually useful and user friendly --- or at least not trying to "get you". At least for me, this leads to being more likely to look for "reject all" or even leave, even if my actual general preference is not that. I've just seen too many of them where clicking anything but "accept all" will lead to some sort of visual punishment.
Moreover, the fact that the dialogues are often once per domain, and by definition per-device and per-browser, they are just .. darn ... everywhere, all the frickin' time.
Question: What strategy have you developed over time to deal with these annoying flies? Just "accept all" muscle memory? Plugins? Using just one site (lemmy.world, obviously) and nothing else? Something better?
Bonus, question (technical take): is there a perspective that this could be dealt on browser technical level? To me it smells like the kind of problem that could be solved in a similar way like language -- ie. via HTTP headers that come from browser preferences.
The annoyances filters in uBlock Origin take care of these, I believe there are a few filters specifically for this exact issue, named appropriately.
Do you know how it handles the actual cookies? Does it auto accept/reject or just block the site from making cookies?
It simply hides them, equivalent to just not doing anything. It would be illegal in the EU if the site tracked users in this case, but U block can also block trackers, so even if they tried it wouldn't work.
I think it just hides the banners and popups, not accepting or declining. I'm not 100% though.
Had no idea this existed. Thanks!
Firefox has addons on mobile, e.g. uBlock origin.
Friendly reminder that consent popups that don't have a clear "reject" option right next to the "accept" button are a violation of GDPR. You can report these to your country's data/privacy governmental body - for example Datatilsynet in Norway/Denmark, CNIL in France. You don't have to do it for every website that you go to, obviously, but if you do it even once you're helping solve this problem for more users than just yourself.
Others have given you some good technical solutions - personally I use the uBlock Origin + annoyance filters enabled approach, and use Firefox on Android to get the same experience there.
Consent-o-matic on laptop. Usually I'll go through the options and be annoyed. Sometimes I can't be bothered and hit accept all.
This is the way. It's developed by some people from a Danish university and it's really trying to navigate the shitty popups and find that decline button. Best add-on I have next to ublock.
On mobile Opera blocks them ok.
Came here to suggest this. Consent-o-Matic seems to be a good tool for dealing with these popups.
You can install uBlock Origin, the imho best ad blocker under the sun, and activate both the “EasyList Annoyances Cookie Notices” and the “AdGuard Annoyances Cookie Notices” lists. https://ublockorigin.com uBlock is available for all the most common platforms Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and there’s a manual install, too.
Consent-o-matic seems to work about 80% of the time. I run the Firefox plugin at home and the Safari extension on my phone.
Does it deny-o-matic?
I think the desktop version lets you configure more fine grained preferences, but yes it’s designed to deny by default.
Alternative for if you want to say no to the cookies:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/
Consent-o-matic is great but it does occasionally get stuck in an endless loop on particularly devious websites.
You can change a couple of settings in Firefox to deal with most (but not all) instantly.
noScript with blocking all Scripts by default. Most sites rely on javascript to ask you the cookie question. Of course that will disable all other javascript functionality which i have to enable manually if I need it.
Most sites rely on JavaScript for everything
Yes but I prefer blocking everything unless whitelisted. It is not convenient, i'm used to it though. And since most sites rely on third party sites for consent management I can use the sites java script functions if I want to by whitelisting. Note that I operate that way because of security and privacy concerns and as an act of protest and not to go around consent pop up that's just a nice side effect.
I've tried the no JavaScript experience for a couple of months, but honestly it breaks to much of the internet for it to be a solution for most people. For me personally it was a worse experience than just having it fully enabled.
I don’t care about cookies extension or ublock origin with Fanboy's Cookie List + Cookie autodelete extension
I recommend "I still don't care about cookies" because that extension didn't sell out.
I've been dabbling with duckduckgo recently. there's a function in the browser settings to allow only what's necessary for the site.
There is an HTTP Header, called "Do Not Track", but unfortunately, it has been broken.
The idea was that even under legislations that allow assuming users want to be tracked, this header being set by explicit user action would have been clear evidence that this assumption is wrong in this case.Unfortunately, Google and Facebook refused to comply outright and with their tracking software running on pretty much all webpages, compliance was never an option for all those webpages.
And Microsoft killed it off completely, by setting it per default in Internet Explorer. Might sound like a good thing, but it meant that the header could be there, even if that particular user actually fucking loves being tracked, which meant it was pretty much legally void.
The dialogues are not primarily about cookie consent but consent handling personal data. With that in mind, my primary concern is not giving that consent unnecessarily. I'm not interested in any personalized tracking when they could do enough usage statistic without consent and without sharing personal data with other parties. (That's why I won't use browser extensions that simply accept everything with the primary purpose of the consent dialogs not showing up.)
Consent-O-Matic is a browser extension that will decline any consent as far as possible.
It doesn't work on every website but that's better than auto-accepting - because I don't want to give consent.
Sometimes, when the barrier is not too high, I use decline all or open choices and save (verifying defaults are off). Depends on what it is though; often times it's not worth it to me to invest just to read their content. (Especially when it's regurgitated from other sources.)
If I can't use a website without consenting to personalized tracking I leave.
Another alternative is using alternate frontends to websites/services or the web archive.
My general view is that any service they could want to provide would be able to be served without consent requests. Ads can be served without personalized tracking (and can still be contextual to content). Visitor and usage tracking/stats can be done in a way without sharing that information to third parties and without individual user tracking. Legitimate interest and handling data to service (according to terms/contract) do not need consent. So really, there is no need for any consent.
/edit: I will be trying out ublock origin's hiding and reading up on Firefox automatic rejection mentioned in other comments. I expect them to behave better than the Consent-O-Matic delay of it going through all settings.
Thanks for pointing out Consent-O-Matic. I'm EU based, so that really comes handy.
I'm having a blast with this kind of suggestions. And because of that I'm loving Lemmy. Thanks!
If I have to click: 'deny' a gazillion times, then I just leave. If they have the alternative: 'deny all', then it's OK.
I have a strict 2-click rule. If I'm not able to disagree to all cookies with two clicks I'm leaving the site again
2 clicks or 10 seconds, whichever comes first.
I don't care about cookies
Noooo way, they got bought out by Avast
Someone forked the last version from before it was bought. I think it’s called “I still don’t care about cookies”
Fuck, why oh why does all the good stuff get bought by bad business? Damn profit greedy bastards.
from the plugin description
In most cases, it just blocks or hides cookie related pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do). It doesn't delete cookies.
...not sure about that. In my heart of hearts, I always want to help out fellow developers with the performance/diag data. I guess I also almost always want "functionality".
The only thing I never want (and that "preference" is often worth leaving the site entirely if it's not easy to express that) is the marketing/social scam. So I'd prefer the plugin to choose this for me.
I understand it's not technically easy to do so, unless there is some standardized way -- at which point we probably would not need plugin for that.
🤦
It's the name of a firefox addon that gets rid of then
I installed Hush (for Apple devices). Totally even forgot about cookie prompts
Duck duck go browser with auto refuse turned on. It stops tracking cookies by default. And then I burn them all anyway when I'm done.
I open 'settings' or 'show more' and disable all I can on most aitea, as that's usually enough. Some sites ar such a nousanse I either avoid them or just open a private window, accept all, read what I want to read and close the window, thus wiping all cookies.
Firefox has settings to automatically hit accept or to automatically hit deny or to first try to hit deny then hit accept if it didn't work. You could end up agreeing to things you might not want to either way though (as sometimes opt out and deny are seperate things you need to do both for.)
This is an eu only thing. Eu passed a law years ago and since then we are boned.
Websites could simply have no cookies and not bother us with them or the note.
Yeah, but then they'd lose their tracking and a lot of the analytics capabilities
Neither of which bothers us, but I suspect it's a lot of their monetization strategies, unfortunately.
Then I'd have to log in to remember my settings. No thanks. Lol
I don’t have a helpful answer, I’m just commenting so I can find out if anyone else does…
That's not how this works. Save the post if you want to return to it later. You will not be notified of new answers in this thread if you comment.
Couldn't agree more. I absolutely hate the half-assed job the EU did on this. Who the hell thought we'd want to get harassed on every site we visit?
The EU did its job correctly by forcing sites to ask for consent. How that rule is implemented is up to the sites, and they often choose to do it in the most annoying possible way. And then tell you to blame the EU for it.
Also as a website owner, you only need to ask for consent when you use more than "strictly necessary" cookies (https://gdpr.eu/cookies/), i.e. cookies that are needed for your site to function normally.
My take: there's many more user preferences (and always have been), that have effect on accessibility, usability and privacy. Cookie usage is just one of them, others are language, geolocation, dark/light theming, etc.
Judging from user perspective, level of implementation of these preferences has historically been a holy mess. For example, for one of the oldest preferences, Language, sites would commonly just take them as nice-to-have, if not ignore it completely. Geolocation is a different story, it looks like the way things are set up, site just has to ask your browser for help so it's harder to ignore it. Dark/light theming---I don't actually know where we are but is seems it's slowly getting better.
Technically, I don't see why data usage consent (cookies or not) could not be just another item in this list---in theory there must be better ways to deal with it than adding HTML dialogs.
I don't know if there's some standardization process going on somewhere, but it looks like we need it. These things take massive amount of collaboration, which just won't happen until the Mozilla's and Google's of the world are "forced" to.
So I appreciate government bodies stepping into this in terms of simply mandating that (but not how) service providers must respect user preferences. Telling them how to do it on a technical level is another question and I can't imagine anyone, let alone average regulatory body do this right on the first attempt.
I appreciate governments stepping in when it's clearly needed but these people get paid a lot of money to get this stuff right. I see no good reason they couldn't have implemented Do Not Track as the standard. Invasion of privacy should be opt-in, never opt-out, let alone some tedious task where you have to manually tick every box along the way.
Most browsers have some amount of settings for forcing sites to request permissions like geolocation anyway so there's little reason to have a borderline EULA to go through before someone can access a website. As for dark/light mode, the implementation on the web of dark modes is so all over the place that I - like many others - just use an extension to force it. It's not native, it's not perfect but it's better than nothing and better than some official attempts.
Who the hell thought we’d want to get harassed on every site we visit?
The sites' operators.
The GDPR does not mandate cookie banners. The GDPR mandates informed consent to processing of your data beyond what is technically necessary to facilitate the service. If all you're doing is store session ids, user preferences or whatever, you need no cookie banner whatsoever.
Lemmy also uses cookies. Do you see a banner? Me neither.Menial banners to "convince"/trick users into accepting severe privacy intrusions (cookies are the least of your concerns here) are an invention of the websites. Most of them aren't even legal as they often do opt-out (straight up against what is written in the law) or use dark patterns to trick users into giving consent (obviously not actual consent).
It's taking a while but the law is slowly being enforced now. Expect slightly less terrible cookie banners in the future. Whenever you do see one though, blame the site operators and law enforcement, not the GDPR.
I don't get why this is even needed. AFAIK the user can set sites that are not allowed to set cookies in the browser settings in chrome and Firefox at least. In theory this should work even better and more reliable than those damn popups.