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Ask HN: How will the GDPR law handle tracking cookies?

17 points by bruno_rzn ↗ HN
I wonder to which extend the GDPR EU Law will have an impact on tracking cookies ?

(Could we prove that a cookie can actually contains personal data, let's say, if the same cookie is spread among enough websites and track everything you do ?)

7 comments

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fenier
Setting aside GDPR - Setting a 3rd Party cookie already fails in enough situations (Safari) that if you really wanted to trace a user cross several site, you'd require a different solution anyway.
bruno_rzn
I mean, since most of Tag Managers solutions let 3rd Parties set cookies, ads companies such as Criteo (for instance) must use them to trace users across several websites, no ?

What kind of other solution do you think about ?

fenier
You can set the cookies but that doesn't mean the browser won't remove them, or a ad-blocker prevent them from being set in the first place. I'm saying if you want something that always works, cookies likely aren't it.

You could do something like an iFrame, with the parent site passing information to the frame. Here's an example: https://medium.com/building-contently/tracking-people-across...

bruno_rzn
Thanks a lot. Very interesting link.

Same question: this iFrame would be used to store information related to the user across websites, it kind of works like a cross-domain-cookie-replacement : could GDPR make these kind of tooling illegal ? Should we display a very specific popup to tell the user what those scripts really do ? And have an opt-out option ?

fenier
Depends a lot about the data you are collecting I suppose. Not a Lawyer, don't know the use case. Can't really venture a guess on where it'd fall.
kasey_junk
It could make this illegal for sure. On your second point, remember GDPR requires opt-in.
Bumerang
The bigger impact on cookies in general will have the ePrivacy regulation [1], but it is not yet finalized.

For example, the proposal clarifies that no consent is needed for non-privacy intrusive cookies improving internet experience (e.g. to remember shopping cart history) or cookies used by a website to count the number of visitors.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/proposal-...