I agree. These companies are making the web a worse experience for all users. I wish they would stop.
At the very least I get the option to not be tracked on those shitty websites, but I would really, really have preferred if they didn't make me go through all those intentionally confusing and probably illegal steps to opt out of tracking.
Did providing a pop up on every website you visit saying they use cookies enable your ability to use the accept no cookies feature browsers have had since Netscape navigator? Was a regulation required to enable a feature of all browsers since the dawn of graphical browsers? Or are you saying the regulation allows you to remember that literally every website in existence uses cookies since you forget between websites?
I’m trying to figure out in what way this has made anything better, safer, or whatever? By the way, cookies is like the 1996 way of tracking and those opt outs don’t opt you out of tracking.
So, yeah. Super giant win for regulations there - clicking away useless disclaimers en masse to satisfy some EU bureaucrats poor understanding of technology. I’m sure they got a great post out of it. It’s like the pop up ad that you are required to pop up on every website but no one benefits, not even the website owner. At least a real ad the website owner makes some money.
I don't want to disable cookies. I want to be able to log in to things, and I'm not happier if the site uses localstorage instead of cookies to track me.
The GDPR doesn't forbid using cookies, by the way. If cookies are used to remember that you logged in using a session cookie, or remember the state of a shopping cart, or stuff like that, no warning is necessary. It's a law which requires consent to tracking, not consent to cookies.
You complain about lawmakers' poor understanding of technology, but I don't think your understanding of law is any better if you think that "every website is forced to show a pop-up". They choose to show a pop-up because they're forced to get consent if they want to track you.
GDPR doesn’t say anything really about cookies, actually. I think you meant ePrivacy.
Fact is most popups inform you about cookie use but don’t give you an option to do jack. And what makes you believe they’re ePrivacy compliant? I’ll bet you 90% of those sites, even when well intentioned, pollute you with tracking cookies anyways.
Edit: by the way no modern website uses cookies to maintain your shopping cart, and instead of relying on a persistent credential cookie, you could just use a password manager to expedite login and be more secure overall. Finally, “private” mode on most browsers contains cookies to short lived session cookies within the tab lifespan.
> GDPR doesn’t say anything really about cookies, actually. I think you meant ePrivacy.
I meant GDPR. It's the reason why websites have to get consent if they want to track you. I believe you're right that it doesn't mention cookies though, I don't believe it cares about what technology is used for tracking.
> Edit: by the way no modern website uses cookies to maintain your shopping cart, and instead of relying on a persistent credential cookie
That's what I meant. You store some unique ID on the client in a cookie, then you have a shopping cart database on the back-end. I didn't mean to imply that the cart items are stored in the cookie, just to distinguish the persistent shopping cart use-case from the logging in to a user account use-case.
> you could just use a password manager to expedite login and be more secure overall.
I do this. I still want to be logged in for a while.
> Finally, “private” mode on most browsers contains cookies to short lived session cookies within the tab lifespan.
I know. Would you find it very convenient if your browser always acted as if you were in private mode and didn't keep you logged in for longer than the lifespan of the tab? No? Neither would I.
No, you’re wrong. It’s ePrivacy. GDPR set the framework, ePrivaxy has largely superseded.
Actually, I do use privacy mode at all times. The only hindrance is the need to recredential. I have a password manager that auto fills those forms in. It works great, and is better security overall. My cookies database shouldn’t be equivalent to a password file, and I don’t carry around a pile of spammy cookies handing them out to every invasive spy company, hoping an obnoxious pop up mandated by an ineffective regulation will shield me. I use computer science, which always works, rather than political science, which is just a degree for folks who like to drink too much.
You always have the option to turn off cookies. There is literally 0 check you have as a user to ensure a company isn't nefariously using cookies despite your preferences. All the law did was force trash pop-ups everywhere.
I don't want to turn off cookies, I want to be able to log in to things. And the cookie technology isn't the problem, tracking is; if the tracking happens locally using localstorage instead of cookies, I haven't gained anything.
The law didn't force pop-ups anywhere. Some companies chose to put pop-ups on their websites.
At the very least I get the option to not be tracked on those shitty websites, but I would really, really have preferred if they didn't make me go through all those intentionally confusing and probably illegal steps to opt out of tracking.