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.'"
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".
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!
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 !
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
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.
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Basically, programming convenience and bug-avoidance. This is a particularly big deal with languages like PHP that embed server-side code into HTML content -- by the time your code realizes that it needs to store something in session context, the header has already been committed (and probably sent). It's not *completely* impossible to work around, but it's a major pain. It's much easier to just set the cookie and establish the session so it'll be there and ready to use when and if you end up needing it.
In any case, the tantrums some people throw about cookies and "storage space" border upon absurd. The most low-end and ghetto throwaway Android phone money can buy has more ram and storage space than a high-end workstation did ~10 years ago. In some cases, it takes more storage space to store the cookie's filename than it takes to store the cookie's payload. Getting mad about being wantonly-tracked everywhere is one thing, but getting mad because a site is consuming a block of hard drive space or a few cells of flash (whose marginal cost is probably a fraction of what it cost to climate-control the air you just inhaled a moment ago) is silly.
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)?