European Union set to revise cookie law, admits cookie banners are annoying

Nemeski@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 1017 points –
European Union set to revise cookie law, admits cookie banners are annoying
techspot.com
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It should be just a browser option.

You set cookies on or off, ans the browser sends the option in the headers. Websites just need to take the option from the header instead of a banner.

It already exists and is called "do not track".

Unfortunately by sending DNT you are merely suggesting to the server that you wish to not be tracked. There's no requirement for the server to actually care about you at all.

Now, if DNT were actually legally binding though - that would indeed be very cool.

Yes and this is what they should have legislated. I don't know if lobbyists or stupidity got in the way, or both. But the fact that this news comes now so close to Google Chrome abolishing cookies for its new "privacy" feature is suspicious timing.

That has been tried with the DoNotTrack header. Turned out servers didn't oblige by it.

That's because it was entirely voluntary. It should be integrated in the browser by law, and the choice should be binding

Yeah, but if the EU required sites to pay attention to them...

There are addons (for firefox at least) where the cookie banner will come up but your browser auotmatically refuses all cookies.

Yes, but it often doesn't work and even when it does the site is unusable while it works, which for some particularly awful banners is several minutes. The situation is worse on mobile where most people have a browser that you can't install add-ons to (and I'm not sure if that one works in firefox mobile anyway)

Am I mistaken in believing it is an already a browser option?

Off the top of my head Qutebrowser and Falkon both support not-saving 3rd party cookies.

Your browser can not save third party cookies, but it might break some sites. Some advertising situations allow the use of first-party cookies, and blocking first-party cookies will break most sites.

In either case you will still have to fill out the consent form, and if the consent is stored in the kind of storage you block, then you will have to fill it out every single time you visit.

The DuckDuckGo browser has this baked in as 'Cookie Pop-up Protection'. It doesn't quite get rid of them all, and doesn't let you set a default for what you want (it'll basically pick the most privacy-forward option) but I've found it works pretty well.