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They tried

EDIT: I didn’t realize the anger this would bring out of people. It was supposed to be a funny meme based on recent real-life situations I’ve encountered, not an attack on the EU.

I appreciate the effort of the EU cookie laws. The practice of them just doesn’t live up to the theory of the law. Shady companies are always going to find a way to be shady.

smileyhead ,
  1. This was not about cookies, but processing of personal data and new definitions of such data. Cookies was just an example.
  2. By those laws, forcing user to consent with denying access to the service is declared illegal.
nothacking ,

Nearly all of these are illegal, but sadly there is little enforcement when it comes to this. (Tracking must be opt-in, not opt-out. Ignoring a banner must be interpreted as declining. Opting out must be a simple option, not navigating a complex and misleading menus. The users choice applies to any form of tracking, not just cookies…)

sturmblast ,

dumbest shit ever

gamey ,
@gamey@feddit.rocks avatar

I generally agree with the statment under that image and it’s certainly a funny meme but also Illegal, sadly the enforcment is a joke but that’s not really the laws fault!

DeriHunter ,

Serious question: I know that there are tracking cookies and the user should be able to decline those,but most sites have an auth cookie that stores you’re credentials. The devs can store it in a different place like local storage but thats really unsecured.what can the devs do in this situation when the user decline all cookies?

Phen ,

The eu rules are mostly about unnecessary cookies. Most web devs just copied whatever everyone else was doing and now there’s this standard of having to accept cookies but the EU doesn’t really enforce it like that

dzire187 ,

it’s not up to the EU to enforce it.

heeplr ,

not sure why you’re downvoted. of course member states enforce it.

KevinNoodle ,

Usually the prompts are specifically for tracking cookies, not essential ones for login. Alternatives without cookies:

  • URL sessions
  • Tokens
  • OAuth/OIDC third party
  • Local/Session Storage (ditto - mind the risks)
GuroGuru ,

The EU is not stupid. They categorized cookies into the necessary ones for site-usage and those that aren’t. So developers just categorize their session cookie (rightfully) as necessary and that’s it.

fosforus ,

Cookies that are crucial for the functioning of the website cannot be disabled by the user.

sip , (edited )

well, they can be disabled by the user and the site simply won’t work.

shasta ,

He means they are exempt from the EU law that says the use must be presented with the option to disable it

nothacking ,

The GDPR is not “cookie law”, it only prohibits tracking users in a way not essential to the operation of the site using locally stored identifiers (cookies, local storage, indexed DB…)

Storing a cookie to track login sessions, or color scheme preference does not require asking the user or allowing them to decline.

smileyhead ,

What the dev can do if user decline processing of personal data is not store such personal data in cookies or anywhere.

Or even better, do not track the user so the consent would only be needed in for example registration form.

RagingNerdoholic ,

Road to hell, good intentions and all that. Government fundamentally misunderstanding the role of cookies and the fact that browsers can handle user privacy with trivial effort by default rather than having every single website annoy the fuck out of you with a million goddamn notifications before actually showing you what you want to see.

kornel ,

The annoying popups are an act of malicious compliance from data harvesting companies. The tracking industry wants people to associate the right to privacy with stupid annoyance, so that people will stop demanding privacy.

The legislation does not say anything about cookies. It’s about rights and responsibilities in data collection (no matter how it’s done technically). The “consent” part of it exists as a compromise, because there has been heavy lobbying against the legislation.

This is not a technical problem — we’ve had many technologies for it, and the industry has sabotaged all of them. There was the P3P spec in 2002! It has been implemented in IE that had 90%+ market share back then. And Google has been actively exploiting a loophole in IE’s implementation to bypass it and have unlimited tracking. Google has paid fines for actively subverting Safari’s early anti-tracking measures. Then browsers tried DNT spec as the simplest possible opt-out, and even that has been totally rejected by the data harvesting industry. There are easy technical solutions, but there are also literally trillions of dollars at stake, and ad companies will viciously sabotage all of it.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Well said, appreciate the write up ☺️

HawlSera ,

I feel like people would have responded to this meme better if you didn’t depict the European Union as an NPC

RobertOwnageJunior ,

Especially compared to some scummy corps.

MDFL OP ,

They’re the ones who made the law. Who else should have been in the meme?

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

The businesses who are actually doing this shit and not the people actually trying to solve issues in the world lmfao.

Honytawk ,

People complaining about the cookie law don’t understand the issue.

The law doesn’t state that websites have to show a cookie banner. It states that if a website wants to track you with cookies, they have to ask permission.

You can get websites (like lemmy and wikipedia) that don’t ask for cookies, because none of them try to track you.

So if a websites demands cookies or they don’t allow access, it is a clear sign that the website only cares about your visit if they can invade your privacy for profit.

Meaning it will just be a dumb clickbait website with no decent content anyway, that you should just skip.

MrBusinessMan ,

Shrewd businessmen: 1

tyrannical big government: 0

CanadaPlus ,

I’m pretty sure breaking your website with no cookies is against the rules, actually. It’s either serve the EU with GDPR-compliance or GTFO entirely.

Yeah, you could still just break the law, but as usual there’s a cost to that one way or the other.

peter ,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

Tons of companies break the cookie law already, but enforcement seems to be rare

PersnickityPenguin ,

What’s the cookie law?

Pixel ,

No cookies before dinner.

peter ,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

The cookie consent banner has to allow you to opt out of cookies as easily as accepting them

gamey ,
@gamey@feddit.rocks avatar

Almoat true, it actually has to be a opt in system, opt out is illegal already!

peter ,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

Yeah, I think it has to default to off but I believe the banner they show shouldn’t make it harder to continue with it being off rather than turning it on

Honytawk ,

If websites want to track you through cookies, they have to ask for permission.

akulium ,

Doesn’t enforcement work by letting competitors sue you if you don’t follow the rules for these things?

CanadaPlus ,

I’ve heard stories about some of the big guys getting hit with sizable GDPR fines. I don’t really know the full extent of what they do but I do imagine there’s someone that makes it their job to prosecute GDPR violations.

Vuraniute ,
@Vuraniute@thelemmy.club avatar

this. and honestly I wish more websites followed the “serve under gdpr or don’t have a European marker”. A random blog once wasn’t available in the EU because of GDPR. And you know what? It’s better than them violating GDPR and the EU doing nothing.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

It’s more about the big boys. If they act in a way that breaks the GDPR, now the EU has a stick to hit them with.

SnipingNinja ,

Your meme is funny, but people genuinely use these arguments to be against sensible EU laws, hence the response I imagine.

Scoopta ,
@Scoopta@programming.dev avatar

I refuse to go to sites that do this, I also refuse to go to sites that block adblock…and specially the sites that detect and block private browsing, that one shouldn’t even be a thing

Zikeji ,
@Zikeji@programming.dev avatar

Sites that block adblock - I have network based filtering I’m not going to take the time to specifically figure out what ad providers you’re using (which is probably that same as everyone else) just to unblock your shitty site.

Scoopta ,
@Scoopta@programming.dev avatar

LOL, I also use DNS based filtering soooo I feel your pain.

WaLLy3K ,
@WaLLy3K@infosec.pub avatar

Hilariously, I find the Pi-hole feature “disable for 5 seconds” often works because it’ll be down for long enough to load the page but not the ads.

PersnickityPenguin ,

Reminds me, I need a pihole

Scoopta ,
@Scoopta@programming.dev avatar

I don’t use pihole…didn’t know that was a thing…still don’t plan on using pihole but that’s cool

ozymandias117 ,

The fun part is that websites that do this are illegal in the EU

They need to start flexing that 4% revenue / year fines

peter ,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

I hope one day they just start fining everyone doing it all at once

corsicanguppy ,

And i hope they start using that sizing thing at airports to keep people from carrying on their massive samsonite tuba-sized suitcases and jamming them into the entirety of the overhead storage.

But we can’t always get what we want.

ignotum ,

I don’t use adblock, and yet i keep getting “disable adblock to view this” messages, fuck this shit

Fissionami ,
@Fissionami@lemmy.ml avatar

Probably Adguard or Pihole? (Some network level blocking?)

ignotum ,

I did have adguard set up, but i disabled it thinking it could help with this issue, which it sadly didn’t

Trainguyrom ,

Most browsers block some ads by default as well as some other privacy protections nowadays. I’m guessing whatever sites you’re hitting have advertisers so scummy they’re blocked by default

ignotum ,

Might be, might be

I’m using Firefox and might’ve set a couple of the privacy settings “too high”, haven’t checked those in forever

hairyballs ,

Why the fuck would they prevent private browsing? I use that a lot to be sure the session is closed correctly.

Scoopta ,
@Scoopta@programming.dev avatar

There’s lots of newspaper sites in the US, that do this. They’ll be like “wanna use private browsing, make an account, or go visit from normal browsing.” Idk why they do it but they do. Apparently there are discrepancies in the way browsers handle persistent storage features between private and non-private browsing that allow for detection

sukhmel ,

I’d guess they just want to keep track of what you read and how many articles. You still can wipe that information from your browser but private browsing makes it more convenient so they ban it

KillerTofu ,

12ft.io

I use this to deal with paywalled articles.

Scoopta ,
@Scoopta@programming.dev avatar

This comment needs more upvotes…I did not know this was a thing and I’ll try to remember it next time I hit a wall

KillerTofu ,

Bigger walls, bigger ladders!!!

Honytawk ,

Cause they can’t track your browser history that way.

Cold_Brew_Enema ,

The second that popup about cookies shows up I immediately backout and not use the site.

MDFL OP ,

That’s like every site. How do you use the internet at all?

RegularGoose ,

It’s becoming a lot easier to use the internet a lot less. It’s been turned into such a user-hostile space so domineered by corporations and fascists that most of the internet doesn’t really hold much of an appeal anymore, at least for me.

If the internet died tomorrow and didn’t come back, I’d be annoyed about not being able to use it to order food, manage my bank account, or watch shows/movies, but the world would likely be an overall better place once logistics re-adapted to not having it.

The internet was cool for the first 10-15 years, but it’s been a rapidly worsening cesspit for a long time. Nothing the internet can offer us is worth also tolerating it as a tool for inescapable government and corporate surveillance, and as the most effective imagineable breeding ground for fascism and disinformation.

The internet makes our lives worse in so many more ways than it imporves them, and people are too fucking addicted to it to give a shit.

Honytawk ,

If you really don’t want to bother, you can use the consent-o-matic addon for Firefox that automatically declines every cookie possible.

genoxidedev1 ,
@genoxidedev1@kbin.social avatar

That's gotta be quite some website you visited, if it didn't load at all without cookies. As someone from Germany, who mostly rejects every sites cookies, except for the essential ones most of the time, but sometimes outright rejects all cookies, I've never encountered a website that refused to load upon doing that.

Not defending any webpages that do do that, just contributing my personal experience.

Also: this for chrome or this for fiefrerfx

SanityFM ,

Consent-o-matic is magnificent.

SlopppyEngineer ,

One extension to automatically accept, one extension to automatically delete everything after the tab is closed.

MDFL OP ,

It’s rare to see (probably since someone pointed out it doesn’t conform to GDPR standards), but I ran into a batch of them in short order recently, so it’s been on my mind.

BuddyTheBeefalo ,

www.oekotest.de

www.pcwelt.de

www.saechsische.de

www.wetter.com

All don’t offer cookie rejection.

genoxidedev1 ,
@genoxidedev1@kbin.social avatar

Makes sense, I don't use any of them, at all. I'm pretty sure there's a place where you can report such webpages for doing that though, though I don't know where at the moment.

Edit: possibly this one

BuddyTheBeefalo ,

Netzpolitik.de checked Germany’s top 100 sites. Not many offer a single click rejection of cookies. Many of them only offer a paid ‘pure abo’ to disable tracking.

datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9GFZM/8/ (German)

gamey ,
@gamey@feddit.rocks avatar

Yea, we have the same issue in Austria but technically that’s illegal behaviour and you should be able to report it somewhere!

AceFuzzLord ,

Don’t know if it’s me or what, but I clicked on the first link and when it opened in my mobile browser, everything started shaking vertically like the page was suffering an earthquake. I’ll definitely have to look into that because I’ve never seen it happen before on any website like it.

PopularUsername ,

I’ve seen Italian sites that will put up a pay wall if you refuse the cookies.

Pandoras_Can_Opener ,

Also from Germany. Some american news and media sites do that.

ErwinLottemann ,

some other just block access from the eu completely. (not a news site, but applebee’s does this)

triplenadir ,
@triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml avatar

www.healthline.com - has a two-click “disable all”, but if you choose it you get a static site with 10 of their articles anon.healthline.com

CanadaPlus ,

I exit in the EU a lot. Same, they mostly work fine with no cookies. It’s much more common to see one that just doesn’t let EU residents in.

BurnedDonutHole ,

Any website that does that I just close the tab.

twistypencil ,

You should travel to Europe sometime and try to use the web

Honytawk ,

Yeah, it is great here.

Either the website is great and doesn’t ask anything.

Or it asks for cookie consent, which you can decline in 1 click.

Or it pulls one of those “break the website” tricks which will get them sued sooner or later.

Or they block access to EU members, at which point you know they only exist to extract your data anyway.

twistypencil ,

I think it would be a worthwhile research project to find out how many users just click through these, accepting what the website wants you to accept by default. It effectively operates like a EULA for every single website, which produces overall fatigue and lack of care. When you’ve visited 20 sites in one day, you just start being irritated by having to constantly make a decision before you can view any content, and just mash whatever button you need to proceed.

Faresh ,

I also live in Europe and almost all websites display a dialog that asks you to choose cookie preferences. However, it seems that some few websites, mostly german (spiegel.de, gutefrage) that give you the opetion to browse with ads and cookies or pay. I do not use those websites and I imagine it is not legal.

Hazzia ,

Be me, american, using a VPN Visit some fucking webber site to read an article Cookie agreement pops up Has a decline all option pog.png Hit “reject all” New popup appears Says “We’ve detected that you’re in the EU. Due to EU regulations, we cannot display this webpage with the ‘reject cookies’ setting selected. Please accept all cookies to continue” Dafuq

MDFL OP ,

Not at all my experience, but ok.

Honytawk ,

Clear sign that the only reason that website exist is to extract your privacy for profit.

Just move on to the billion other websites that don’t try to violate you.

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