EDIT: I didn’t realize the anger this would bring out of people. It was supposed to be a funny meme based on recent real-life situations I’ve encountered, not an attack on the EU.

I appreciate the effort of the EU cookie laws. The practice of them just doesn’t live up to the theory of the law. Shady companies are always going to find a way to be shady.

  • Pigeon@programming.dev
    3·
    1 year ago

    Not allowing users to access a service at all unless they accept cookies is often against GDPR. See: Can we use ‘cookie walls’?.

    To quote:

    In some circumstances, this approach is inappropriate; for example, where the user or subscriber has no genuine choice but to sign up. This is because the UK GDPR says that consent must be freely given.

    If your use of a cookie wall is intended to require, or influence, users to agree to their personal data being used by you or any third parties as a condition of accessing your service, then it is unlikely that user consent is considered valid.

    The key is that individuals are provided with a genuine free choice; consent should not be bundled up as a condition of the service unless it is necessary for that service.

    These cookie banners often violate all sorts of GDPR rules even more explicitly than this example. For example did you know it’s not allowed to have pre-ticked boxes on cookie popups for non-essential cookies?

    • purplemonkeymad@programming.dev
      2·
      1 year ago

      IIRC the EU also ruled that burying the rejection options under additional links counts as a violation. Hence why Google now has a Reject button next to the accept button. Most sites still do that.

        • Pigeon@programming.dev
          1·
          1 year ago

          I encounter something similar to this often.

          There’s a lot of cookie banners where “Accept All Cookies” is a single button but in order to reject cookies you have to press a “Manage Cookies” link which will have something similar to a “Reject All Cookies” button in it.

          It’s very annoying.

      • Pigeon@programming.dev
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yes this would make sense.

        Quote from “What methods can we use to obtain consent?”:

        If you are asking for consent electronically, consent must be “not unnecessarily disruptive to the use of the service for which it is provided”. You need to ensure you adopt the most user-friendly method you can.

        For a website, hiding rejection behind a link should class as “unnecessarily disruptive”. If you can provide consent with the press of a single button then rejecting should also be the press of a single button.

        • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
          1·
          1 year ago

          I mean almost all websites fall foul of that. You often have to bury deep and end up with a palette of complicated choices and acceptances of individual tracking companies. It’s a bloody mess. The EU should just have mandated “do not track” adherence. There’s already a standard; just enforce it.

    • Sysosmaster@infosec.pub
      1·
      1 year ago

      even worse offenders are the ones with tick boxes for “Legitimate Interest”, since legitimate interest is another grounds for processing (just ads freely given consent is one), the fact you got a “tick” box for it makes it NOT legitimate interest within the confines of the GDPR.

      it also doesn’t matter what technology you use whether its cookies / urls / images / local storage / spy satellites. its solely about how you use the data…