Slashdot Mirror
UK Cookie Consent Banners Draw Complaints
nk497 writes "Earlier this year, the UK's data watchdog the ICO started enforcing an EU rule that means websites must ask visitors before dropping cookies onto their computers. However, it was willing to accept 'implied consent' — telling visitors that cookies are used on the site, and assuming they were fine with that if they keep using the site. That led to banners popping up on every major website, including the ICO's site, warning users about cookies. Now, the ICO has revealed that many of the cookie-related complaints it's received in the past six months are actually about those banners — and the law itself. The ICO said people 'are unhappy with implied consent mechanisms, especially where cookies are placed immediately on entry to the site,' adding 'a significant number of people also raised concerns about the new rules themselves and the effect of usability of websites.'"
From the featured article:
"We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website, including improving
the relevance of advertising from other organisations, as set out in our cookie policy.
By using this website you agree we may place these cookies on your device."
Why do I need a law about cookies when I can very easily manage who I allow to put cookies on my machine? Why would I trust a third-party site to respect my wishes on cookies? This whole thing seems like government overreach to me.
These banners annoy the living crap out of me. Every time I go to a website, they pop up, obstructing the screen.
Of course, there is a way to make them go away, by accepting the cookies on the website.
Whereas before I could just discard cookies upon exit, I now have to permanently accept them just to stop these banners appearing.
Oh, the irony!
Summation 2
Why do I need a law about cookies when I can very easily manage who I allow to put cookies on my machine?
Because most users other than you have not been trained in how to "very easily manage who [they] allow to put cookies on [their] machine".
The fucking pointless cookie popups are a monster PITA on my phone. Especially when I clear them every time I close thr browser to save space.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
If I didn't want to have cookies on my PC, I'd disable them in the browser. This bad law annoys the crap out of me, and I don't even live in the country that implemented it.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
an EU rule that means websites must ask visitors before dropping cookies onto their computers
First I've heard of the rule.
Hah. How ridiculous. Wonder how the people who decided this was a good idea felt when they discovered nearly every damn website on the internet uses cookies.
1. Law is passed in an attempt to curtail your behavior.
2. You object to this law and wish to continue doing whatever the fuck you want.
3. You implement the most annoying clickwrap contract-of-adhesion you can come up with to stay within the letter of the law, continue doing whatever the fuck you want, and imply to your customers that regulatory meany-heads are to blame for their experience sucking.
4. Profit!
They're not Biscuit Consent Banners!
When I read the headline I thought this article was about the advertising of baked dessert cookies in bakeries in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I need to stop thinking about food. lol
The cookies system of consent might be ok if they had been devised by three year olds, but having left it to overpaid politicians, they are not.
Specifically:
1. they popup for all sites
2. they cost users money since its extra bandwidth; on mobiles with the crappy browsers, often clicking on ok, assuming you can actually hit the silly little X icon, result in a retransfer of the web page
3. almost none of the web sites understand who you are, so you see them continuously
4. they appear right in the middle of the (pitifully few words of) text which appear on most web sites
5. they are difficult/impossible to block across the range of browsers a real user needs
6. most people, myself included, have no clue what the point of this exercise is
Sure, I dont want to be tracked - so just dont track me. Dont put pointless garbage on my screen which nobody cares about.
Honestly, bring back the three year olds !
Considering that governments use the letter of the law to punish whoever they deem to be miscreants, maybe the lesson here should be something along the lines of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Because picayune regulation like this never seems to solve any problem other than generating make-work for government bureaucrats.
Joe Schmoe is just going to click away the banner.
I.e. usability of all the sites remains pretty much the same. It's just that every site now shows an irritating pop-up which any Joe Schmoe will click away before continuing the way things were in the first place.
Net positive effect: Zero.
Net negative effect: Nothing accomplished, all the same privacy issues are still there but it takes a click more to use those sites.
The spirit of the law is to protect users. The people creating sites don't care, and are, in fact, hostile to any such consideration.
In all reality, cookies enable some pretty good behavior on web sites, but more often than not, are designed to track user behavior against their own interests.
Dear Mom, I would give you all my moderator points if I had them. Now please stop using the computer. -Josh
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People want to be able to control 'cookies' and be protected from abusive use of the technology. A law that simply forces sites to tell people that they are using 'cookies' is utterly useless- and useless by design.
In the UK, local councils sell the information they collect about residents to junk mail companies and worse. When the watchdog is worse than the criminal, what hope is there.
What people want is a government that will take firm legal action against practises that ordinary people would identify as 'beyond the pale'.
-websites should NOT be allowed to pass on private information to any other company.
-websites that attempt to exploit ANY weakness in the browser to access private user information (including browser history) should suffer a mandatory death penalty, with imprisonment for those responsible for the website.
-no form of 'ad' tracking should be allowed whatsoever. 'Ads', by law, should be only allowed to follow the model of ads on TV or in newspapers. In other words, online 'ads' should never be user-aware, only location aware.
-laws should be in place explicitly criminalising 'loop-hole' research, by defining allowed online-ad behaviour to the nth-degree.
-'active' ads only allowed in iron-clad sandboxes. Massive mandatory financial penalties must apply to ad server companies that ever allow malicious 'active' ads.
No-one that uses the Internet objects to properly used cookies. What we object to are the 'sharks' that are always found in middle management, looking for an immoral 'edge' to boost their bonuses. Be warned, though- the 'real name' policy of Facebook is every bit as obscene and despicable as the 'scareware' served by ex-Soviet states. It is important to never forget what is RIGHT and what is WRONG on our Internet. Every bad move is the "thin edge of the wedge" that, if not reversed, will give encouragement to others planning online evil.
Why are these websites loading cookies the moment you go to a page, before you can even login or present them with data that is worthwhile to have in a cookie? If nothing else you should take this as a warning as to what websites are tracking you across the internet, and to just flat out avoid them.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
By now, I think we all get it - non-techies included; if we visit a website, we might get a cookie installed onto our computers. These intrusive banners have made that perfectly clear to the point where it is now extremely annoying.
I especially hate it on my phone. Due to the nature of my interactions with apps like Twitter, I quite often end up visiting sites I've never visited before. And these floating banners with the X are incredibly difficult to close and get rid of - hampering my browsing experience.
I understand that the people who came up with this idea probably had their heart in the right place, but seriously, it really needs to stop.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
They were called Briskets in the UK.
If the EU law mentioned Trackers instead of Cookies, none of this would have happened. There wouldn't even have to notify the user since nothing of value was lost from not tracking them.
I don't have any problem with a site wanting to use cookies, and putting them on my computer. What I do have a problem is when a site "reads" information (cookies/history/etc.) and sends that info up the chain. That is what should be banned. "They" have no right reading anything on my computer w/o my consent.
With all of the other ways companies and the government can get to your private data, and cookies have been at the top of people's "shit list" for so long now. I just find it humorous.
Governments should keep their hands out of the internet.
I discovered on at least one site that blocking cookies for them meant that the banner never goes away!
Bloody annoying!
So I hacked up a Greasemonkey script to remove the banners.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I don't care if any single company gathers information. They can gather away and store the information like squirrels in little burrows they dug in the hillside. What I do care about is when they share the data. This whole "trusted third parties" crap is well crap. I really really get upset when I hear about companies that gather up personal data and then sell it on to other companies that start vacuuming it all together to start building a profile as you move through the internet.
So if these politicians had the slightest understanding of where the problem really lay they would ban the sharing of any data from one company to another. I don't want anyone but the electrical company to know anything about my account. The amount of information that your electrical system leaks is quite extraordinary. Minimally they can figure out what time you get home each day and sell that to telemarketers who will know exactly when to call you, If they can time the call perfectly to your arrival with your jacket still on you might run for the phone and not have enough time to check to see that it is a crap number.
Your phone company can see you phoning car companies and then suddenly an insurance company will phone you to see if you want insurance for your soon to be new car. But then you get the insidious government prying. There might be a mugging at 6pm and they see you arrive at your house at 6:05 and now you are on their suspect list. Let's look at his surfing. Oh he bought a jacket last year that roughly matches the description given by the victim and he is behind on a few bills and maybe needs some money quick.
So I don't care if a website gathers all kinds of data to figure out what seemed to have attracted me to their site and which page I left off on, as long as they don't share that with anyone... ever.
There is no benefit for their use to me on 90% of the pages I visit.
All that tells me is that you browse more web sites as a visitor than as a registered user. Without a cookie, you cannot post on Slashdot as h4rr4r; you can only post as Anonymous Coward. Without a cookie, you cannot read your webmail. Without a cookie, you cannot buy things from online stores that use a shopping cart (your cart ID is stored in a cookie) or 1-click shopping (which requires being logged in); instead, you have to copy and paste all the SKUs into the window with the payment form. Or would you prefer that all web sites switch from cookies to HTTP basic authentication and that online stores require users to create an account in order to shop (so that the user ID can be used as the cart ID)?
I thought the baked dessert was called a "biscuit" in Great Britain.
Why are these websites loading cookies the moment you go to a page, before you can even login or present them with data that is worthwhile to have in a cookie?
Take Phil's Hobby Shop for example. When you display a product's page, it adds the product to a list of recently viewed product pages, which is displayed at the left side of the product page. And to separate your list from other users' lists, it needs to store an anonymous session identifier in a cookie called philshobbyshop_sessionid. These anonymous sessions end after 16 hours and do not identify a user unless the user clicks "Log in" to convert the session to a logged-in session. All this is explained on the site's privacy policy.