Google Is Reversing Its Decision to Kill Cookies Internet cookies are here to stay. July 23, 2024

[Condobloke]

Google Is Reversing Its Decision to Kill Cookies

Earlier this year, Google confirmed its plans to kill internet cookies for good. On Monday, it reversed course.

lifehacker.com

If you were looking forward to an internet free of cookies, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Google is officially cancelling its plans to kill cookies.

The company announced the decision in a blog post Monday, citing feedback from regulators, publishers, developers, and individuals in the advertising industry. Google says that, while the company still believes it can strike a balance between the online ad marketplace and user privacy, it understands the existing challenges in doing so with this many moving parts. The company says, "this transition requires significant work by many participants and will have an impact on publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising."

Click on the links above for more.

 

[APTI]

call me stupid but I never saw the problem with cookies. I have used them in some development but often not needed. The controversy as far as I know was because some european politicians heard that cookies write data and can be read by websites. But they failed to understand that the data written is small and only readable by the website that created them. Or am I missing something with cookies and security? sounds like much ado about nothing.

 

[gvisoc]

The core of the matter here are the third party cookies and the tracking: if you have any, let's say, Facebook javascript in your website, or Google ad-sense, Facebook or Google could insert their own unique-id-cookie in your browser as a third party cookie and begin surveying your web activity for their profit.

But then third party cookies became almost trivial to block.

That's why Google wanted to kill cookies: because third party cookies because they are so easy to block, it's so easy to compromise Google's ads line of revenue. This is not because Google is somehow back to not being evil. Google wanted to go away from cookies to embed things like the browser fingerprinting and the cohort-based targeting deeper and deeper in the de-facto standard, and also removing power from the ad-blocker extensions by changing the format of their manifest --the way an extension declares and is granted with permissions.

If Google is abandoning this due to regulator push-back or further requirements on those surveillance alternatives which would be harder to block then I, for one, think that the regulators did a very good job. By having the malvertisement industry to use cookies as their main surveillance tool, they are ensuring that blocking ads will be easy and cheap --business as usual. My internet will continue to be clean even if Firefox ends up dying, something that Mozilla seems to be trying with all their efforts, as told by their last few hundreds of decisions.

 

[Condobloke]

This is not because Google is somehow back to not being evil.

Amen.

 

[Caluser2000]

Still functioning ok down this wayzzzz

You see there are countries that DO NOT have to adhere to US legislation....

 

[Condobloke]

CrowdStrike glitch: Kiwi firms warned to stay vigilant as hack threats linger

Cyber experts are warning New Zealand companies caught in the CrowdStrike IT outage it could be several days before they are protected.

www.rnz.co.nz

 

[GatorsFan]

The core of the matter here are the third party cookies and the tracking: if you have any, let's say, Facebook javascript in your website, or Google ad-sense, Facebook or Google could insert their own unique-id-cookie in your browser as a third party cookie and begin surveying your web activity for their profit.

But then third party cookies became almost trivial to block.

That's why Google wanted to kill cookies: because third party cookies because they are so easy to block, it's so easy to compromise Google's ads line of revenue. This is not because Google is somehow back to not being evil. Google wanted to go away from cookies to embed things like the browser fingerprinting and the cohort-based targeting deeper and deeper in the de-facto standard, and also removing power from the ad-blocker extensions by changing the format of their manifest --the way an extension declares and is granted with permissions.

If Google is abandoning this due to regulator push-back or further requirements on those surveillance alternatives which would be harder to block then I, for one, think that the regulators did a very good job. By having the malvertisement industry to use cookies as their main surveillance tool, they are ensuring that blocking ads will be easy and cheap --business as usual. My internet will continue to be clean even if Firefox ends up dying, something that Mozilla seems to be trying with all their efforts, as told by their last few hundreds of decisions.

Just another reason as to why I use Ungoogled Chromium - all the Google crap has been ripped out of it

GitHub - berkley4/ungoogled-chromium-debian: Debian, Ubuntu, and others packaging for ungoogled-chromium

Debian, Ubuntu, and others packaging for ungoogled-chromium - berkley4/ungoogled-chromium-debian

github.com

Of course it only works on Debian/Ubuntu based distro's

 

[APTI]

Still functioning ok down this wayzzzz

You see there are countries that DO NOT have to adhere to US legislation....

actually that annoying legislation about having to accept cookies on every website you visit is coming from the E.U. the US has no law about it, at least not federally. But all the website devs are doing it just in case and because of the E.U.
But if somebody makes a stupid law that does nothing but annoy people, I am sure the US will enact it.

And thanks, I forgot about the 3rd party cookie thing but again easy to fix.

 

[gvisoc]

Edit: Typos everywhere.

Well, the "stupid law" is basically forcing a lot of moronic companies to point at themselves, making it easy for the consumer to decide who to not work with. There are cases where a single newspaper is forced to disclose that they sell your browsing history within their domain to more than 800 different private-owned companies.

It's funny how US-centric mindset thinks that such thing is bad, almost saying that it's OK to hide the fact that your information is sold to 800+ companies. Almost like you prefer to be hidden from that reality just for the sake of your convenience.

 

[gvisoc]

I am not exaggerating. See here: 850 partners storing, accessing and processing personal data. And look at what they are forced to disclose: identification through device scanning, geolocation, personalising content (which is a precondition to create echo chambers --coming from a newspaper!!!)

I, for one, prefer to have some regulators that force those facts to be disclosed. And that propose a different set of rules that put informed consent over surveillance and opt-in by default.

 

[APTI]

I am not exaggerating. See here: 850 partners storing, accessing and processing personal data. And look at what they are forced to disclose: identification through device scanning, geolocation, personalising content (which is a precondition to create echo chambers --coming from a newspaper!!!)

View attachment 21329

I, for one, prefer to have some regulators that force those facts to be disclosed. And that propose a different set of rules that put informed consent over surveillance and opt-in by default.

thanks for the what sounded like response with attitude about us U.S.centric mindsets... but the laws are only asking for permission to use cookies and still not disclosing things. This means we have to put up with annoying popups on every site just to say yes. What you really want is the behind the scenes stuff such as instead of asking is it ok to use cookies, how about just make it illegal to share data collected outside the specific entity that has the website. This currently is working like the M$ EULA that is never read.

 

[gvisoc]

My comment about US-centric mindsets comes after months of arguing about this everywhere else, don't take it personally.

In the EU is not enough to ask if it's OK to use cookies, there must be a way to reject them(*). The websites that only offer an OK are the reaction of so many companies that (a) can afford a EU fine, or (b) are small enough to not be pursued within the EU, which outside the EU, are all other but the ones in (a). Most of the morally decent websites in the EU allow you to disable all non-essential cookies, being the "essential cookies" those that prevent DDoS attacks, remember my log in, or the session cookies to be able to navigate from one page to another without having to log in every time.

With regards to the "just about", making it illegal to share data collected outside the specific entity that has the website is more harmful than beneficial, because some partners may be lawful, and not all purposes are surveillance. The point is to make it clear that there has to be consent.

(*) In the last months this has led to a new way of moronism, by which a company can tell you "Accept the Cookies or Subscribe".

 

[APTI]

My comment about US-centric mindsets comes after months of arguing about this everywhere else, don't take it personally.

In the EU is not enough to ask if it's OK to use cookies, there must be a way to reject them(*). The websites that only offer an OK are the reaction of so many companies that (a) can afford a EU fine, or (b) are small enough to not be pursued within the EU, which outside the EU, are all other but the ones in (a). Most of the morally decent websites in the EU allow you to disable all non-essential cookies, being the "essential cookies" those that prevent DDoS attacks, remember my log in, or the session cookies to be able to navigate from one page to another without having to log in every time.

With regards to the "just about", making it illegal to share data collected outside the specific entity that has the website is more harmful than beneficial, because some partners may be lawful, and not all purposes are surveillance. The point is to make it clear that there has to be consent.

(*) In the last months this has led to a new way of moronism, by which a company can tell you "Accept the Cookies or Subscribe".

I just got done with a huge argument with my girlfriend over taking things out on the wrong person. Both of us at fault. So take a small bit of advice from my long term fire dept and short term law enforcement time, do not carry anything from the previous incident as it will cloud the current. Not always easy to do.

I have never abused cookies or the information, in fact I avoid using them and can usually get around it in my stuff. So I wrongly assume that others are as nice and careful about it as I am. But I do stand behind there has to be a better way. The problem is that no matter what you have or do, somebody will find a way to abuse it. Perhaps as a planet we are just not mature enough.

Seems you are far more involved and informed than I am, so if a person says something that hits you wrong, maybe they don't know better. Respectfully asking.. do you have a solution? if not maybe you should come up with one and present it. It may catch on.
please do not take this message as adversarial. I mean this kindly and in a way to learn on all sides.

 

[gvisoc]

I do have some more mileage on these waters because I am indeed a dual EU and Australian citizen. I was born and lived in Spain for almost 37 years.

In terms of adversarial conversations, all I have to say is that calling laws that actually do good "stupid" sometimes cause itch in a conversation. I think we both can take something out of this.

As per practical solutions, I do use an external tracker blocker. Begun with a PiHole at home, and then went over to NextDNS to be able to carry that protection when on the go. I use Firefox as well, with the Container extension which allows you to sandbox cookies and trackers in a way that they would only perceive the websites you use within the same container.

The benefit of something like a PiHole or NextDNS is that the blocking being done at a DNS level saves so much CPU on your device, because the javascript libraries that would circumvent your third-party-cookies-denial won't even reach your device. However, this is detected sometimes, to which there's not much to do about, and there is where the Firefox Containers can complete your defenses.

The result is that I can accept the cookies but the value perceived by the stalkers be ultimately limited by means of either sandboxing or DNS.

What I ultimately ended up doing was to subscribe to the newspapers I wanted to read, and be vocal about all this and vote consequently. And this all has been thickening my skin quite a bit, when I want to read something and a paywall or a cookies-or-pay wall appear, I just don't bother --I am sure it will be readable on some other site.

 

[APTI]

I have also used ad blocking DNS for mobile. Mobile devices like phones get so much advertising it makes it almost useless. I don't want to be tracked (yeah I have a phone and I know it gets tracked). The only time I ever wanted to be tracked was during divorcing my now ex-wife. Everytime she claimed I was somewhere harassing her, I could show my phone and the tracking and show I was nowhere near there. But I am sure that is a unique situation.
My beef is people that say things like... "If you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't have any worry about being tracked or listened to." giving up privacy for security is not a good thing. I get the idea we are on the same page on things, I just do not know as much as you about the cookie issue, other than "ME LOVE COOKIE".