[Macha]

Storing previous_visitor=1 into local storage is not the type of tracking most people are objecting to, nor is it against the gdpr until you start having user specific indicators or trying to use a collection of values as a fingerprint.

[hartator]

And it is enough to get you in trouble if it’s a website you are not supposed to see.

[lupire]

The data you choose to store with your software on your local machine is your responsibility.

Tracking is server side behavior.

3P cookies aren't a problem, per se. Using 3rd party cookies to join data with other server side data is the problem.

[hartator]

Well you can still reject all cookies then, making all of these cookies popup nonsense.

[norman784]

Is that so? Event if you check that on the client side without sending that data to the server?

[hartator]

A wife can find out a husband is trying to cheat on them for example.

[closewith]

Not GDPR, but probably does require consent under the ePrivacy Directive.

[account42]

> Storing previous_visitor=1 into local storage is not the type of tracking most people are objecting to

Who are you to speak for "most people". I do object to that kind of cookie being placed without my explicit consent. It provides at least some identifying information that might allow multiple websites working together to uniquely identify you.

[PeterisP]

No, a cookie with default settings attached to https://example.com saying "previous_visitor=true" does not provide any information whatsoever to any sites other than https://example.com.

There are various techniques to place "cookies" (sometimes not technically cookies) that can be correlated by multiple websites working together, but the website has to go out of their way to proactively do that, this is not something that gets enabled by simply placing a standard non-personalized cookie.

[pcl]

… and once it’s used by multiple sites to uniquely identify you, it becomes a tracking cookie in (most of) the laws on the books.

The law judges intent as well as technology.