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by ertdfgcb 4136 days ago
This was a great article, but the "This site uses cookies" warning struck me as a little disingenuous. It seems like there's a choice to not accept cookies, but if you click "Decline" it just kicks you out to Google. It's nice that they ask but the options really should be "Accept" or "Leave". Maybe this is standard, I usually just ignore those things.
2 comments
jib 4136 days ago
It is a stupid EU law: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
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unabridged 4136 days ago
Session cookies require no notice. Only persistent cookies and 3rd party cookies require notice, and there are no features on this site that should require them (besides remembering an affirmative response to the cookie warning). In fact there are no features that should require any cookies, save them for logged in users.
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Silhouette 4136 days ago
Session cookies require no notice.

It's mostly an academic issue at this point -- European governments seem to have realised that this law is very poorly written and even the governments seem to have little interest in either following it themselves or having the relevant authorities enforce it.

That said, I think you're mischaracterising what the letter of the law says. It's not session cookies that are exempt, it's (paraphrased, read at your own risk) cookies that are essential for the normal operation of the site. In practice this probably means session cookies for things like logging in or shopping basket contents, but that's coincidental.

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kuschku 4136 days ago
Which is not stupid in theory, but all websites implement it wrong.

It was intended to forbid using tracking cookies without user approval, and this is the intent of the law. Nothing more.

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munificent 4136 days ago
Laws are judged by their effect, not their intent.

Prohibition didn't intend to create organized crime, but that was certainly an effect of it, and that effect influences whether or not it was good law.

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mike-cardwell 4136 days ago
There's an ad-block filter specifically for removing these things:

https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list

Just add this to your filter list:

https://raw.github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list/ma...

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hackuser 4136 days ago
> the "This site uses cookies" warning struck me as a little disingenuous. It seems like there's a choice to not accept cookies, but if you click "Decline" it just kicks you out to Google.

With JavaScript and cookies blocked, the site worked fine. I never saw a warning.

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