Published on 12, July, 2020
Have you noticed that websites often ask for a permission to run cookies?
For example, here.
However, often they only give the option to allow the cookies, but the "No" is not available and the banner cannot be removed any other way than saying "Yes".
So, effectively, pushing people to accept the cookies.
I find this so frustrating.
Do you have the same problem?
I do not understand why the websites often only offer the Accept option.
There often is not the Reject option.
Increasingly I am seeing a 'manage settings' options or similar, which allows you to turn off the cookies that may be to do with marketing or other things that are 'not necessary' to the function of the website. It's a little time-consuming but that helps opt out.
The trouble is that many websites rely on cookies, for example this forum. When you log in, the website sends some information (the cookie) to your computer or browser to store, so that when you next look at a page the website knows what account you are logged in as and offers information and options accordingly.
However, cookies are one way for a website operator to compile other information on you: what pages on other sites you have looked at for example, so as to determine what stupid advert to show you. For some websites like Facebook, the cookie can be a key to a lot of personal data they hold on you. The EU Cookie Directive (law) was an attempt to deal with this, but in many ways wasn't well written, and that's why websites tried to show they were trying to comply, even if they weren't (because you couldn't refuse the cookies as they were already programmed in the software). The 'manage settings' option (like you might see on for example the Financial Times) probably does comply with the law, because the cookies that remain could be argued to be 'strictly necessary'.
(In theory, cookies aren't necessary, but they are used for most popular websites nowadays. In my techie opinion, they are overdesigned. It should be easy to dynamically store session details in a query string argument instead.)