When browsers finally step up and start managing cookies properly for once, can we finally get rid of the silly cookie banners?
I still find it odd how I'm constantly being asked if I'm fine with a website storing information in a place I have full control over. In theory it's the perfect method, privacy wise, it's just the user-agents who have dropped the ball massively.
California is suing Sephora for noncompliance, more will follow when the word gets out. I don’t know why the EU is dragging its feet incorporating GPC into GDPR.
Even if all cookies were completely disabled in all browsers, current privacy laws like GDPR would still require consent for all the tracking and sharing of private information that companies do through other means, and so websites would probably still display banners to remain in compliance.
Even that wouldn't change too much about the status quo for websites. Already a large part of third-party cookies is just you using a "free" (or paid) service by adding their tracking code to your website.
Why? I get that you don't like having your personal information traded, neither do I, but seemingly enough people like it that they give this information freely.
You don't need to disable cookies, just make sure that users are aware of what they're doing (which I'd argue is the browser's job, not the website's). If you send people a ticket number do you need to ask their permission for them to remember the number? No. Tracking cookies work the exact same way.
We're in the weird situation where we're banning what is by far the best and most privacy preserving solution in the name of privacy.
I mean can you come up with a way that is better than letting a user store data locally in their full control?
We need to bring back the do not track header as the legal means of giving consent. It’s a standard, its browser controlled and implementation is easier than the cookie banners.
Just make users make the choice, once, and for every website up front when they setup their browser.
It's one of the best marketing moves corporate has done in a long while that people think the banners are due to GDPR or the EU cookie law — they're not. They're only there because companies want to track you in as many ways as possible and they legally cannot without showing you a banner. You can set cookies which are required to use the main functionality without any kind of a banner, you only need a banner to track and hoard data.
Legally they can't even with a typical banner, since consent has to be specific and informed. There can be no informed consent when the banner presents 100+ data processors. The problem is that it's not enforced in any way.
I mean that's basically the same as saying it's because of the GPDR. People had these grand aspirations that the law would make companies change their behavior to not have the banner but that was daft. It just became another compliance checklist item.
The mistake was assuming companies can feel shame.
Why aren't people responding to the law in the way I want them to?! lol
The point is that the blame for those banners should be placed squarely on the websites that use them. If people are mad about them, they should be made at the website, not the GDPR.
That section in the GPDR didn't reduce tracking, it just added banners, and its removal would make the banners go away.
Legislate the behavior you want to see, not the behavior you hope will be a side-effect. You can't say, "the law is fine, it's the children that are wrong" when sites responded to the incentives they were placed under. The system finds an equilibrium at "everyone keeps doing exactly what they were doing before, just with a banner" and that's entirely the fault of the law. The incentives even go to far as to punish defectors because anyone who does right by their users loses money.
I still find it odd how I'm constantly being asked if I'm fine with a website storing information in a place I have full control over. In theory it's the perfect method, privacy wise, it's just the user-agents who have dropped the ball massively.