Jonathan Schofield3d ago
Dear BBC, why does a public-funded national broadcaster need to set cookies that cross the GDPR threshold for its articles to be read uninterrupted?
Show threadJonathan Schofield3d ago

…The BBC currently sets 97 cookies it regards as “strictly necessary” and cannot be opted out of.

97!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/cookies/strictly-necessary-cookies/

What strictly necessary cookies does the BBC use?

Show threadJonathan Schofield

…One of the angles its cookies policy statements bang on about is things it ‘has’ to do to serve international audiences.

But aren’t there good geolocation APIs these days which mean that UK visitors don’t need to be treated like they *might* be from outside the UK by default?

Apr 11 at 8:25amIvory for iOS
Show threadJonathan Schofield3d ago

…One of the cookies that the BBC regards as “strictly necessary” is

ckns_nonce

which “Helps to keep BBC accounts secure while signed in”.

But, apart from being unfortunately named for British audiences, surely that’s only “necessary” when one *is* signed in?

Show threadMarjorieR3d ago
@urlyman which makes it all the more amazing is that the BBC keep losing my login and I have to often login again (noting that I'm not agressively killing cookies myself).
Show threadJonathan Schofield3d ago

@marjolica indeed.

Pretty sure the overwhelming approach by large web dev teams is something like “we want to know this datum, or at least my boss does, how can we construct a rationale for why we *need* it”

Show threadMarjorieR3d ago

@urlyman apart from this excess of 'essential' cookies, most of which are not required from the site to work (such as their various analytics cookies, many contracted out to a melange of 3rd party comanies as well as ones set by their own team) lots of their 'personalisation' still fail if you block third party cookies!

Their clever suggestion is to exempt their site from your 3rd party blocking.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/cookies/what-happens-if-third-party-cookies-are-disabled-on-my-browser

What happens if third party cookies are disabled on my browser?

Show threadJonathan Schofield3d ago

@marjolica the sheer amount of analytics regarded as “necessary” is certainly quite something.

I suppose some of it is statutory, like the stuff for Barb https://www.barb.co.uk/about-us/how-we-do-what-we-do/

Show thread@pndc3d ago
@urlyman The BBC actually uses strong geolocation on pretty much all of its sites (including dynamic detection of VPNs and proxies; they're not just buying in GeoIP databases), since that's how they decide whether to serve advertising, force-redirect from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com, block access to iPlayer, etc. So it's not a credible excuse to claim that they can't tell whether a visitor is in the UK or abroad.
Show threadRay McCarthy3d ago

@urlyman
No, there is no reason to set cookies at all, except one if you log in. There should be no need to sign in. It's not a paid online service.

The BBC lost the plot over 50 years ago when they were recycling £85 tapes that cost £10,000 to produce.

By all means have a bbc.com for international, but the UK version should be available to everyone. It's not the TV or Radio programs that might (and should not have) international rights issues.

I support copyright, but corporate is broken.

Show threadRay McCarthy3d ago

@urlyman
Geolocation for web delivery is evil. Worse than DRM.
1. There is no perfect source.
2. IPs should not be geographically linked. An invasion of privacy.

Physical letters & parcel delivery needs a physical address. Nothing online should need. Splitting "rights" by region is abuse of the original intent of copyright to divide the market due to greed.