Cookie monsters
“We value your privacy…” Yes, sure you do.
If they valued my privacy so much, they would simply not be using the 100s of tracking cookies on their site. My privacy is not valued, nor is anyone else’s. We’ve known this for a very, very long time. In recent times the biggest culprits of personal data harvesting have been forced to make this more obvious because of the EU’s privacy laws, particularly GDPR. They now have to display to visitors their use of cookies, and seek clear consent to proceed on that basis.
Nevertheless, I have observed that many major sites are flouting the law by not making the consent process clear, by using opt-out instead of opt-in, and by not providing any kind of “reject all” (even if that only applies to non-essential cookies). Indeed, it would seem that they have adopted a strategy of presenting a massive “cookie notice” overlay that has a big “I accept” button and a refinement process that is so convoluted that almost nobody will go through it. The “I accept” button is essentially coercion.
It would also seem to be the case that some sites have already dropped cookies into your browser while they are presenting the big cookie notice and waiting for your consent!
This has to stop.
I trust the CJEU and the various associated national data protection agencies will be slapping more fines as time goes on, and hopefully the message will get through.
Categorised as: Legal and Political, Web