browser popups aren't quite the scourge that they were 20 years ago but nowadays
there's a new irritating popup in town the one that asks you to accept all
cookies so what exactly are you agreeing to when you click that button it helps
to First understand what a cookie actually does other than provide empty
calories a cookie is a small piece of identifying information saved to your
browser some are what we call first party cookies which originate from the
website you're actually on these perform very vious tasks to help the website
function such as saving your session once you log in taking note of your
location so the site can tell what the weather is like outside or retaining
settings such as keeping website's dark mode enabled other cookies are
thirdparty cookies which are the ones that cause considerably more controversy
as these are usually the ones involved in ad tracking an Advertiser that places
an ad on a website will also put a cookie on your PC that follows you
around on the web and tracks your activity with the idea being to use that
data to serve you relevant ads so if you're a big hockey fan that likes to
read about your favorite team you might start seeing ads telling you to buy
tickets when you're catching up on the news later that day unsurprisingly ad
tracking makes plenty of people uncomfortable so there have been laws
passed in recent years that attempt to limit it most notably the e-privacy
directive often referred to as the EU cookie law this cookie law makes it
illegal for websites to place cookies on your device device until you click on
that agree button and on the surface this sounds like a pretty good way to
protect users privacy right well there
are a couple of glaring issues with that law including one you encounter daily
and we'll tell you all about them right after we thank fresh books the invoicing
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today one reason that the E privacy directive is suboptimal is that its
requirement for the website to give you a userfriendly option for managing your
cookies is pretty weak you see user
friendly sounds like a good thing but many websites interpret this Clause
fairly liberally often to the extent of presenting you with a dark pattern what
we mean is that the accept all button is a very attention grabbing and very easy
to click on button while some websites are Good Guy Greg and make the reject
all button immediately accessible and equally prominent many others force you
to dig through a less obvious cookie settings menu where a bunch of other
options for disabling specific types of tracking cookies are present with the
option to reject all unnecessary cookies relatively hard to find on a site where
you just needed to spend 3 seconds looking up a fact and this is going to
take at least 20 second and just like a
terms of service or privacy policy the vast majority of people aren't going to
bother to read all that cookie fine print when the notice pops up most of us
are just going to hit accept all and move on meaning that you're consenting
to ad tracking in all likelihood that isn't even the only issue with how these
cookie warnings are designed the ones that flat out prevent you from viewing
the website until you hit agree called cookie walls don't even comply with the
EU cookie law and others are so poorly designed that the reject cookies button
doesn't just reject thirdparty cookies they can actually break the website they
reject all cookies unfortunately the EU hasn't
exactly been super Vigilant about enforcing the cookie law so useless user
unfriendly warnings have become the order of the day so are we just faded to
deal with all of these cookie warnings forever not necessarily there are
actually browser extensions available at least on desktop browsers that can autod
dismiss these cookie popups combine those with setting your browser to
Simply block all thirdparty cookies on its own and you have a pretty decent way
to protect your privacy without having to navigate irritating menus on every
website for the notices that still slip through though it is best practice to
reject as many third party cookies as you can unless unless you really like
getting targeted ads for embarrassing personal care products thanks for
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