Mastodawn

How do you deal with endless cookies dialogues?

https://lemmy.world/post/1526648

How do you deal with endless cookies dialogues? - Lemmy.world

This might be just EU thing, but is there an effective way to deal with endless “accept/reject cookies” dialogues? Regardless of the politics behind, I think we can all agree that current state of practice around these dialogues is …just awful. Basically everyone seems to use some sort of common middleware to create the actual dialogue and it’s rare case when they are actually useful and user friendly — or at least not trying to “get you”. At least for me, this leads to being more likely to look for “reject all” or even leave, even if my actual general preference is not that. I’ve just seen too many of them where clicking anything but “accept all” will lead to some sort of visual punishment. Moreover, the fact that the dialogues are often once per domain, and by definition per-device and per-browser, they are just … darn … everywhere. Question: What strategy have you developed over time to deal with these annoying flies? Just “accept all” muscle memory? Plugins? Using just one site (lemmy.world, obviously) and nothing else? Something better? Bonus, question (technical take): is there a perspective that this could be dealt on browser technical level? To me it smells like the kind of problem that could be solved in a similar way like language – ie. via HTTP headers that come from browser preferences.

Wowiejr Jul 15, 2023

I don’t have a helpful answer, I’m just commenting so I can find out if anyone else does…

Atemu Jul 15, 2023

That’s not how this works. Save the post if you want to return to it later. You will not be notified of new answers in this thread if you comment.

sramder Jul 15, 2023

Consent-o-matic seems to work about 80% of the time. I run the Firefox plugin at home and the Safari extension on my phone.

scarabic Jul 15, 2023

Does it deny-o-matic?

Jernej Simončič �Jul 15, 2023

@scarabic @sramder It lets you choose:

CAPSLOCKFTW Jul 15, 2023

noScript with blocking all Scripts by default. Most sites rely on javascript to ask you the cookie question. Of course that will disable all other javascript functionality which i have to enable manually if I need it.

danhab99 Jul 15, 2023

Most sites rely on JavaScript for everything

CAPSLOCKFTW Jul 15, 2023

Yes but I prefer blocking everything unless whitelisted. It is not convenient, i’m used to it though. And since most sites rely on third party sites for consent management I can use the sites java script functions if I want to by whitelisting. Note that I operate that way because of security and privacy concerns and as an act of protest and not to go around consent pop up that’s just a nice side effect.

Jamie Jul 15, 2023

I pair it with AdNauseum and have my browser “click” on every ad it sees. I don’t know if those are being filtered on the other end or not, but I like to think that I’m making the advertisers pay for clicks they aren’t really getting and messing with their metrics.

CaptObvious Jul 15, 2023

If there were a way to be sure that this is not tied to my identity, I’d be all over wasting their money as much as possible.

Jernej Simončič �Jul 15, 2023

@danhab99 @CAPSLOCKFTW You can use uMatrix to selectively block images, scripts, media, XHR requests, iframes with a simple graphical interface.

Jamie Jul 15, 2023

You’d be surprised how many sites are still functional enough without JS. Even then, you can often keep a lot of the tracking sites blocked and only whitelist the essentials.

danhab99 Jul 15, 2023

Honestly my opinion comes from my professional experience as a web developer. I only use react and every website I’ve ever created requires JavaScript.

Kilamaos Jul 15, 2023

This. While react is entirely js, plenty enough have js somewhere for something. Manually whitelisting stuff is a widely unnecessary burden.

Blamemeta Jul 15, 2023

Yeah, pretty much ever web framework in the past 2 decades is JS or TS.

netvor Jul 16, 2023

“I only use React” therefore “Most sites rely on JavaScript”?

So you wrote more than half of the Internet? Impressive…

Geth Jul 15, 2023

I’ve tried the no JavaScript experience for a couple of months, but honestly it breaks to much of the internet for it to be a solution for most people. For me personally it was a worse experience than just having it fully enabled.

Proteus Jul 15, 2023

I’ve been dabbling with duckduckgo recently. there’s a function in the browser settings to allow only what’s necessary for the site.

Navarian Jul 15, 2023

The annoyances filters in uBlock Origin take care of these, I believe there are a few filters specifically for this exact issue, named appropriately.

netvor Jul 15, 2023

what… I’ve had uBlock Origin enabled all the time, just never went to settings… :-D

Konlanx Jul 15, 2023

Where exactly did you find that setting?

Pechente Jul 15, 2023

Click the uBlock icon > click the gear in the bottom right > click the second tab called “filter lists” > extend “annoyances” category > pick “adguard - cookie notices”

Konlanx Jul 15, 2023

Thank you so much!

Grimlo9ic Jul 15, 2023

What a top-tier tip. I'm one of those people who have uBlock Origin but never knew about this. Thank you!

Nomadin Jul 15, 2023

Thank you! Great tip!

kaladininskyrim Jul 15, 2023

Do you know if there is a difference between AdGuard and EasyList lists? or if any of the two are more trustworthy?

ryven Jul 15, 2023

Honestly I just enabled all of them on the grounds that blocking too many things is probably preferable to not blocking enough.

guyrocket Jul 15, 2023

Thanks for this...I just did it...what exactly does it do?

FireRetardant Jul 15, 2023

Do you know how it handles the actual cookies? Does it auto accept/reject or just block the site from making cookies?

count0 Jul 15, 2023

There’s CookieAutoDelete (or anonymous tabs, containers, …) for the other side of this issue.

DevCat Jul 15, 2023

Yup, I have mine setup to autodelete cookies from tabs I’ve closed after 15 seconds. I just “accept all” cookies and don’t worry about it.

nothacking Jul 15, 2023

It simply hides them, equivalent to just not doing anything. It would be illegal in the EU if the site tracked users in this case, but U block can also block trackers, so even if they tried it wouldn’t work.

Navarian Jul 16, 2023

I think it just hides the banners and popups, not accepting or declining. I’m not 100% though.

JohnDClay Jul 15, 2023

Is there a way to get it on mobile?

TheGreenGolem Jul 15, 2023

Firefox has addons on mobile, e.g. uBlock origin.

boredtortoise Jul 16, 2023

Does anyone know of a comprehensive cookie modal list for it? It still shows many with all the annoyance lists active

TheGreenGolem Jul 15, 2023

Firefox has addons on mobile, e.g. uBlock origin.

mrmanager Jul 15, 2023

Had no idea this existed. Thanks!

TheGreenGolem Jul 15, 2023

Firefox has addons on mobile, e.g. uBlock origin.

jochem Jul 15, 2023

Consent-o-matic on laptop. Usually I’ll go through the options and be annoyed. Sometimes I can’t be bothered and hit accept all.

xylogx Jul 15, 2023

On mobile Opera blocks them ok.

CaptObvious Jul 15, 2023

Came here to suggest this. Consent-o-Matic seems to be a good tool for dealing with these popups.

Jernej Simončič �Jul 15, 2023

@netvor Before finding Consent-o-Matic, I either clicked Reject All (if the button was present) or used uBlock Origin's Block Element to hide the prompt if it wasn't.

Keep in mind that these dialogs are not necessary at all – sites do not have to prompt for cookies they need to work (which is what you're supposed to get when you click Reject All), the prompts are only for 3rd party tracking cookies, but ad industry wants to do their best to make people think that EU regulations are the problem, and not the ad industry tracking.

Consent-O-Matic

Babu Menos Jul 15, 2023

You can install uBlock Origin, the imho best ad blocker under the sun, and activate both the “EasyList Annoyances Cookie Notices” and the “AdGuard Annoyances Cookie Notices” lists. ublockorigin.com uBlock is available for all the most common platforms Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and there’s a manual install, too.

uBlock Origin - Free, open-source ad blocker

uBlock Origin is a free, open-source ad blocker. Block ads on YouTube, Twitch, and across the web with low CPU and memory usage. Available for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and more.

uBlock Origin

Jernej Simončič �Jul 15, 2023

@netvor Oh, and as for handling this on browser level – we already have the Do not track option, but ad industry as a whole decided to ignore it. EU regulations should've made taking Do not track in consideration mandatory (and if it was set, pre-emptively have all 3rd party cookies rejected).

DebatableRaccoon Jul 15, 2023

Couldn’t agree more. I absolutely hate the half-assed job the EU did on this. Who the hell thought we’d want to get harassed on every site we visit?

0xSim Jul 15, 2023

The EU did its job correctly by forcing sites to ask for consent. How that rule is implemented is up to the sites, and they often choose to do it in the most annoying possible way. And then tell you to blame the EU for it.

Also as a website owner, you only need to ask for consent when you use more than "strictly necessary" cookies (https://gdpr.eu/cookies/), i.e. cookies that are needed for you site to function normally.

Cookies, the GDPR, and the ePrivacy Directive - GDPR.eu

Cookies can give businesses insight into their users’ online activity. Unforunately they are subject to both the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, making compliance difficult.

GDPR.eu

count0 Jul 15, 2023

The ruling has been updated to say that accepting cannot be more convenient/streamlined/less clicks than rejecting, though.

Getting that enforced is another matter altogether, however.

localhost001 Jul 15, 2023

I just learned about the (Do Not Track) standard, which seems like a much better solution. Just tell your browser once that you don’t want to be tracked, and websites are required to respect that. Rather than each website implementing its own banner UI.

Do Not Track - Wikipedia

DebatableRaccoon Jul 15, 2023

Unfortunately even when it’s built into your browser, some sites get around it. It’s definitely a much better idea than the half-assed mess though.

DebatableRaccoon Jul 15, 2023

I blame the EU for not forcing implementation of Do Not Track standards. I will forever maintain that scraping of personal data of any kind should be opt-in, not opt-out. These people get paid a lot of money to get this right.

0xSim Jul 15, 2023

It is opt-in though? The site can't track you until you agree with its cookies policy

netvor Jul 15, 2023

My take: there’s many more user preferences (and always have been), that have effect on accessibility, usability and privacy. Cookie usage is just one of them, others are language, geolocation, dark/light theming, etc.

Judging from user perspective, level of implementation of these preferences has historically been a holy mess. For example, for one of the oldest preferences, Language, sites would commonly just take them as nice-to-have, if not ignore it completely. Geolocation is a different story, it looks like the way things are set up, site just has to ask your browser for help so it’s harder to ignore it. Dark/light theming—I don’t actually know where we are but is seems it’s slowly getting better.

Technically, I don’t see why data usage consent (cookies or not) could not be just another item in this list—in theory there must be better ways to deal with it than adding HTML dialogs.

I don’t know if there’s some standardization process going on somewhere, but it looks like we need it. These things take massive amount of collaboration, which just won’t happen until the Mozilla’s and Google’s of the world are “forced” to.

So I appreciate government bodies stepping into this in terms of simply mandating that (but not how) service providers must respect user preferences. Telling them how to do it on a technical level is another question and I can’t imagine anyone, let alone average regulatory body do this right on the first attempt.

DebatableRaccoon Jul 15, 2023

I appreciate governments stepping in when it’s clearly needed but these people get paid a lot of money to get this stuff right. I see no good reason they couldn’t have implemented Do Not Track as the standard. Invasion of privacy should be opt-in, never opt-out, let alone some tedious task where you have to manually tick every box along the way.

Most browsers have some amount of settings for forcing sites to request permissions like geolocation anyway so there’s little reason to have a borderline EULA to go through before someone can access a website. As for dark/light mode, the implementation on the web of dark modes is so all over the place that I - like many others - just use an extension to force it. It’s not native, it’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing and better than some official attempts.

Atemu Jul 15, 2023

Who the hell thought we’d want to get harassed on every site we visit?

The site operators.

The GDPR does not mandate cookie banners. The GDPR mandates informed consent to processing of your data beyond what is technically necessary to facilitate the service. If all you’re doing is store session ids, user preferences or whatever, you need no cookie banner whatsoever.

Menial banners to “convince”/trick users into accepting severe privacy intrusions (cookies are the least of your concerns here) are an invention of the websites. Most of them aren’t even legal as they often do opt-out (straight up against what is written in the law) or use dark patterns to trick users into giving consent (obviously not actual consent).

It’s taking a while but the law is slowly being enforced now. Expect slightly less terrible cookie banners in the future. Whenever you do see one though, blame the site operators and law enforcement, not the GDPR.

ErwinLottemann Jul 16, 2023

I don’t get why this is even needed. AFAIK the user can set sites that are not allowed to set cookies in the browser settings. In theory this should work even better and more reliable than those damn popups.

DebatableRaccoon Jul 17, 2023

They can but that doesn’t get rid of the banners, or worse the plague that is screen overlays.

ErwinLottemann Jul 17, 2023

I was talking about the way the law was made. Why does it require every site to implement a function that the browser already has and does better. They could have made it a requirement for browsers to inform the user about his possibility to block cookies from certain domains on the first launch, just like they made Microsoft to inform about other available browsers after the first startup of Windows XP (I think it was XP…).

But there is something even better coming I heard - there will be the possibility to have a ‘trusted external service’ handle the cookie opt-in-and-out for the users. WHY?! It looks like these laws are made by people without any kind of understanding how any of this even works…

honey-im-meat-grinding Jul 15, 2023

Friendly reminder that consent popups that don't have a clear "reject" option right next to the "accept" button are a violation of GDPR. You can report these to your country's data/privacy governmental body - for example Datatilsynet in Norway/Denmark, CNIL in France. You don't have to do it for every website that you go to, obviously, but if you do it even once you're helping solve this problem for more users than just yourself.

Others have given you some good technical solutions - personally I use the uBlock Origin + annoyance filters enabled approach, and use Firefox on Android to get the same experience there.

ultratiem Jul 15, 2023

I installed Hush (for Apple devices). Totally even forgot about cookie prompts