The EU’s landmark privacy law, GDPR, was one of the best things to happen to the internet for a very long time. But it also came with one of the most annoying things on the web: a never-ending series of pop-ups asking us to make cookie choices …
A quick recap on GDPR
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force back in 2018, offering the strongest tech privacy protections ever seen. Even better, although the law only applied to EU citizens, many tech giants decided it was easier to comply globally, so everyone benefited. This was true of Apple, for example.
You can read our full summary here, but the core of it is four restrictions on the collection, storage, and processing of our personal data:
- There must be a specific, lawful reason to process the data
- Personal data must be encrypted
- You have a right to a copy of your data
- You can ask for your data to be deleted
The problem with cookies
Cookies are small text files that can be saved to our devices to enable websites to do things like track whether we have visited the site before, and whether we have been exposed to a banner ad for that site.
Cookies aren’t always evil. They are, for example, the mechanism by which a website recognizes that we have been there before and – if we have registered – automatically logs us in. However, they can be used for far sketchier purposes.
Perhaps the most evil usage is to record the fact that we have looked up the price of a particular flight. If we return later to book it, the site will conclude that we need to travel on that flight and have been unable to find a better deal, and it will therefore only offer it to us at a higher price than the one we saw before.
The annoying cookie consent rule
Because they can be used in nefarious ways, and can compromise our privacy, GDPR required websites to seek consent to store cookies on our devices. The result is an annoying pop-up on almost every website we ever visit.
Worse, many websites are guilty of malicious compliance. They offer us a choice between agreeing and another button for managing cookies. If we click the second one, we are presented with a deliberately long-winded and confusing array of choices designed to persuade us that it’s much faster and easier simply to agree.
The law is going to change
The EU has finally recognised that this doesn’t really provide consumers with a free choice. The vast majority of people click the agree button just to dismiss the pop-up.
As The Verge reports, we will in future be able to set a single preference in our browser and all websites will have to respect that choice.
Instead of having to click accept or reject on a cookie pop-up for every website you visit in Europe, the EU is preparing to enforce rules that will allow users to set their preferences for cookies at the browser level. “People can set their privacy preferences centrally — for example via the browser — and websites must respect them,” says the EU. “This will drastically simplify users’ online experience.”
Companies will also no longer be required to seek consent for harmless uses like automatically logging us in when we have chosen to sign-up.
The new rules won’t come into effect until sometime next year, and there will be an interim change, which means that websites will be forced to offer a simple yes/no choice rather than the deliberately complex ones offered now.
Highlighted accessories
- Official Apple Store on Amazon
- Apple 40W Dynamic Power Adapter for iPhone 17
- Official Apple iPhone Air cases and bumpers
- iPhone Air MagSafe Battery
- Official iPhone Air case
- Official iPhone 17 cases
- Official iPhone 17 Pro cases and Pro Max cases
Photo by Olia Gozha on Unsplash
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