What the title says. I remember, let’s say 10/15 years ago cookies were definitely a thing, but not every website used it. Nowadays you can rarely find a website that doesn’t give you a huge pop-up at visit to tell you you need to accept cookies, and most of these pop-ups cleverly hide the option to reject them/straight up make you deselect every cookie tracker. How come? Why do websites seemingly rely on you accepting their cookies?
In: Technology
They all used them 10/15 years ago, most of them just didn’t tell you. The EU passed the GDPR which requires websites to tell you now.
Webistes spend a lot of money on digital advertising, they want to know what is working well, and what isn’t, and they want to know quickly so they don’t waste money.
You are more aware of that now because of banners or pop ups asking for your consent, because in many places that is now mandated by law.
Any interaction the website remembers, is cookies. Links that you opened are purple? That’s cookies. Changing font size? Cookies. “don’t show this again”? Cookies.
Useless warnings “we are using cookies. OK.” are a consequence of some websites selling your data, and thus by a new law having to warn you about selling your data.
But laws are never written perfectly, so as a side effect, all websites now remind you that every website uses cookies.
Websites have been using cookies since the NetScape browser invented them in 1994. And since google and facebook in the early 2000ths basicly any website that wanted to make money had them. The only diffrence is that since the eu introduced GDPR in 2016 websites now have to tell you that they are using cookies to track you. Btw tracking isnt the only reason for cookies, they are very usefull for a lot of things like a having shopping cart on a website like amazon would we a lot more difficult without cookies.
If I’m a toy company and I want to get your parents to buy you our toys for your birthday then I need to know exactly what you looked at and as much information as I can get about you.
Because of that we use cookies and then track your viewing habits on our website and also on other websites and then cross examine them to pinpoint what toys we show ads for and what products we should make.
They always did. But a law in the EU required websites to give you the options to reject them. So now instead of just putting them in your computer without your permission, you get pop ups. But the companies that own the websites want you to have cookies on your computer so they can track you more easily, so that make it as difficult as legally allowed to reject them.
Cookies basically allow a site to store information on your computer so it can be preserved and carried over from web page to web page. It’s why, for example, you can visit an online store without logging in, add some items to the basket, and those items are still there when you switch to a different site or close the browser. The cookie the site placed on your PC through your browser maintains that information.
These are what websites classify as “basic functionality” cookies and you usually aren’t allowed to disable them because it would break the functionality of the site. Imagine adding an item to the basket, clicking the “pay now” button and in loading up the payment page, the site forgot what was in your basket.
What people have been making a fuss about are tracking cookies, and cookies which capture more information than is necessary for functionality. Why does the site need to track which browser you’re using, or exactly where you are accessing the site from if all they actually need is a delivery address and card number?
Tracking cookies in particular can be thought of as “spying” on the user: they log which sites they’re visiting, what they’re searching for etc.
These are the types of cookies that can be disabled, often branded as “quality of life” features to make your experience better. This may be true to some extent, but the major driver behind them is that this kind of information is valuable and can be sold to advertisers and marketing agencies. This is also why sites sometimes make it a pain in the ass to reject them.
That “accept all” button looks so tempting when you just want to order some damn books and don’t want to have to mess around with menus.
I don’t care about cookies extension is great. Just know it will break some websites, but you can just exclude those that it doesn’t work on. ~~https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Dont-Care-About-Cookies~~
Edit: Don’t use “I don’t care about cookies”. Use the community updated extension “I still don’t care about cookies”.
What’s worse is that they still tell you to wipe out your cookies if you have a web site problem. I have cookies from a hundred sites that do _good_ things for me. Tell me what cookies you inject (including 3rd party) and I’ll delete _those_.
They’ve always been there. They’re just forced to disclose now
[This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_f5wNw-2c0) is from 12 years ago talking about the prevalence of tracking cookies
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