A loophole in parliamentary procedure allowed MEPs to extend mass scanning of private communications until 2026 — without a direct vote on the substance of the law.
You got it a little backwards. Websites were already collecting that data and adding those cookies, the EU regulation forced them to tell you about it and let you opt-out.
You are right, they were already doing that but the annoying popups aren’t because of the EU, the sites could just not set cookies to collect data they didn’t need to provide the service by default and not nag you constantly to let them have their way. It’s operation “wear them down” .
Well of course, but my point was the data collection and tracking and all that other stuff was already happening in full volume prior to the regulation. The nagging to re-enable is a dark pattern of course, but prior to that the only recourse we had was to disable all cookies at the browser level.
To that point, as much as cookies have been associated with tracking and ads and such, they have/had a very important purpose in providing services on a website. It’s how the “remember me” button works for instance, or to store your preferences without making an account, among other things.
However, because a browser can’t really easily determine what a cookie is used for since it’s basically just an ID and a (usually) encrypted data blob, the only guaranteed way for it to block tracking cookies is to block all cookies. The EU regulation IMO is a “good” regulation, with the inevitable malicious compliance of corporations.
You got it a little backwards. Websites were already collecting that data and adding those cookies, the EU regulation forced them to tell you about it and let you opt-out.
You are right, they were already doing that but the annoying popups aren’t because of the EU, the sites could just not set cookies to collect data they didn’t need to provide the service by default and not nag you constantly to let them have their way. It’s operation “wear them down” .
Well of course, but my point was the data collection and tracking and all that other stuff was already happening in full volume prior to the regulation. The nagging to re-enable is a dark pattern of course, but prior to that the only recourse we had was to disable all cookies at the browser level.
To that point, as much as cookies have been associated with tracking and ads and such, they have/had a very important purpose in providing services on a website. It’s how the “remember me” button works for instance, or to store your preferences without making an account, among other things.
However, because a browser can’t really easily determine what a cookie is used for since it’s basically just an ID and a (usually) encrypted data blob, the only guaranteed way for it to block tracking cookies is to block all cookies. The EU regulation IMO is a “good” regulation, with the inevitable malicious compliance of corporations.