IAB Europe's ad consent popups pose privacy problem Online popup solicitations that seek consent for targeted ads in Europe represent personal information, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) – a decision characterized as either a "mortal wound" for online ad tracking, or a welcome clarification, depending on whom you ask. On Thursday, the CJEU upheld …
The term 'charade' is used in this article, which is not strong enough.
It is a murky morass.
We are pestered several times a day by these stupid popups which are still designed to beat us into submission (consent). They are not transparent! Who reads the long list of companies under each category, let alone understands who they are or what they do - and what they do with 'your' data?
And more recently the notion that you also consent to 'legitimate interest', adding further sliders you have to undo (I thought that was illegal already).
Solution:
Make 'no consent' the default and not require removing consent from legitimate interest categories. Have a button on a website where the operator can put forward all the arguments why someone should consent. And if someone continues to browse, they don't...
Simple. And overdue.
Oh - and what happens in the UK???
Oh - and what happens in the UK???
At least one Brit is asking themselves how to find/block/spoof the "TC Strings" generated by their devices. Why this isn't a default OS or browser choice is somewhat puzzling, as is a generic opt-out for all stalking and tracking garbage.
Long list of companies? Due to a potentially unlawful "interpretation" of the rules (my opinion), the French authorities have allowed for users to be given a choice to "accept all this tracking" or "pay/subscribe". There's no free choice possible so I don't know what mind twisting is necessary to think that is acceptable.
At any rate, a site I briefly stopped by (comment ça marche) had a pop-up that explained this and stated what would be done with my information and cookies placed on my machine by both them and their 275 partners.
Fuck that noise, I hit back so hard the shock wave created a singularity.
and their 275 partners
I can top this. TVGuide.co.uk says:
"We and our 449 partners store and/or access information on a device, such as cookies and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information sent by a device for personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, and audience insights, as well as to develop and improve products."
Four hundred and forty nine! WTAF.
Thankfully "Reject All" is two taps away, as if that is anything more than a placebo.
Then you have the easy/cheap/free website generator ("wix.com", et. al.) whose generated websites greet one with the message, "You must enable cookies to view this website", and/or, "You must enable Javascript to view this website."
Those companies won't change because (a) they want a share of that ad revenue, and, (b) their customers typically don't care; most of them probably don't even understand enough about how the Internet works to even begin to care ("I get my Internet through the big blue-and-green "e" button that's on my desktop. What's 'Javascript'?").
You missed another 103 under 'special purposes'/'security and fraud prevention', 88 more under 'special purposes'/'deliver and present ads and content'... and a shed load more under 'features', where they combine data from different sources and link your various devices... none of which are covered by 'reject all'
I use the Firefox feature which allows me to open all websites (except a few I set up as exceptions) in a new, unique, empty container. So any cookies a site set just get discarded.
That doesn't stop them tracking me by IP address, but I take other precautions against that (by changing the IP address of my browsing proxy at least every day).
What forms of tracking have I still missed?
* Browser/system fingerprinting - what fonts you have installed, CPU, OS and OS version, browser, browser version, etc.
* Supercookies.
* MAC address of your PC (your REAL MAC address, not the one you told your OS to spoof)
? Can you configure your Android or iOS phone to use your browser proxy? And, after having done so and rebooted, if a site then requests your MAC address, does it get that address from your browsing proxy, or from your smartphone?
Doesn't work (the 1-star rating of the answer is probably a clue to that). However, feel free to post a URL here which, if I click it, will display my MAC address. I will let you know if it works. I'll even allow Javascript to run.
Fingerprinting is, indeed, a problem but I use several Firefox plug-ins to defend against that.
I can't comment on phones - I don't do any significant web access from them.
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