← Back to context

Comment by jebronie2

1 day ago

Wrong.

Not wrong in the EU, you don't need to ask for consent nor notify about cookies which are required to make the site functional. Tracking and ads don't fall under that though, which is why every site these days does need to ask for your consent.

  • No, you need to always ask for consent for cookies if they come from a third party, regardless if they are only required to enable functionality. You also need to ask for consent each time data leaves the website (for example when loading an image from a third party host). You can't even load a font file from a third party server because the users IP reaches that server without consent. Cookie banners don't just handle third party tracking cookies, the are needed to record consent for a huge variety of cases. "Banning tracking cookies" does not remove the need for cookie banners.

    • Well if the cookie comes from a third party it implicitly allows tracking.

      Also AFAIK the Google Fonts question (is the IP alone already PII, if Google has no way of tying the IP to a person) has not been decided by the ECJ yet. There've only been decisions by lower level German courts that are still in dispute.

      1 reply →

    • Putting assets on a 3rd party server is indeed a great way to track people. They can completely fuck off with all of that as well.

      1 reply →

  • This is actually slightly narrower exception than people (and regulators) think. The exception is:

    > strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.

    One very ignored qualifier here is "information society service". This is defined in Directive 2015/1535 and one of the requirements is that the service is "normally provided for remuneration". That is usually understood to mean that the service needs to be tied to provider's economic activity. This effectively excludes, for example, public authorities websites which are for their own public duties. It does however include e.g. ad supported websites.

    And yes, I'm aware that many national implementations actually miss that qualifier. That can save the non-commercial private sector websites, but public authorities do not benefit from Member States failing to transpose Directive correctly.

    • What I hate about EU laws is they tend to word these things like this.

      People act shocked when it leads to unintended side effects, but companies legal teams are just telling them they have no idea how a judge will interpret these broad wordings in regards to their business.

      People say this fixes "future loopholes" but as you see with the cookie banner, it just leads to every company assuming the worst case scenario.

      Going back years of conversation on cookie banners you'll see a constant argument on when they're required or not precisely because it's not defined explicitly.

      1 reply →