I know they’ve been around since the GDPR came into effect, but I’ve suddenly noticed a sharp increase in the cookie prompts on web pages which have a second “legitimate interest” page. Some of these have an “object all” button, but plenty require you to manually opt-out of sometimes hundreds of ad-trackers.
The cynic in me assumes this is a legal loophole, whereby they can claim legitimate interest in your data in order to do exactly what they were going to do anyway (which is not what the legitimate interest feature of the GDPR is for) without being required to give you a “reject all” button.
- Am I being overly paranoid or is this exactly what’s happening?
- Does blocking all third-party cookies (something your browser should be able to do by default) negate all this need to reject anyway?
- If not then what’s the solution?
If you do have an answer then please state if it applies to EU/UK or other, non-GDPR-respecting countries!
Personally I don’t trust cookie policies at all, I use plugins that will bypass cookie banners and then auto delete cookies 20 seconds later.
Using a plugin make you more trackable
Yes, it is a choice. I choose to delete cookies because it is the technique most websites use. Tracking plugins, canvas, webrtc, etc are harder to defend against and if they are all deployed by a tracking site, it is almost impossible to not be unique.
Do you know a good plugin for this on Firefox?
Well, I still disable them. The theory behind them is, that they actually serve a purpose for the function of the site, whereas cookies in general can be used for a variety of actions. Like tracking. Realistically, the site will work just fine without.
Cookies are less harmful when comparing to other tracking like canvas fingerprint or thirdparty scripts tracking.
I asked about it too, read the answers here:
Legitimate interest is their interest, not yours.
Legitimate interest is their interest, not yours.
The interest might be theirs but the “legitimate” part absolutely has to incorporate a written justification somewhere within the the depths of the mandated records of processing activities that explains why the business/institution couldn’t possibly do what they’re doing without processing that particular piece of user data. “I want that” is not legitimate interest in the sense of Article 6.
Agree. But practically they may claim using such data to improve their systems. This is a valid LI justification. But still it provides no benefits to users to whom those data are collected from, while at the same time increases their risks (such as mishandling of their data - which is common since it’s very difficult to handle data 100% correctly).
For me there is no legitimate interest from sites. When they ask to track you, the answer is no for me. Required cookies that will break the site when you block them are bad enough, but can be useful for fora or sites where you order stuff.
