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Ask HN: Why cookie consent overlays cover the whole page?

2 points by volument ↗ HN
I just went to read this article https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/29/penn-station-robert-caro-073564 about "Why Your Holiday Travel Is Awful". Unfortunately, it was just another site with a fullscreen "We value your privacy" overlay that overlapped all the content. I obviously know I can get rid of it by pressin "I accept", but I pressed the Back button instead and went away.

I just don't understand this. Why make it so big? I know it's perfectly legal to make it small and unannoying.

6 comments

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pwg
> Why make it so big? I know it's perfectly legal to make it small and unannoying.

Likely because when it was small, not enough users clicked 'I accept" to allow tracking such that their advertisers balked and wanted to pay much less per eyeball.

So the response was "force the user to click "I accept" before they see the content, then the tracking cookies can be set and we can get a larger ad revenue share".

> I obviously know I can get rid of it by pressin "I accept"

I generally do one of two things:

1) delete the overlay with dev tools

2) leave the page

Which one I do depends upon how interested I might be in reading the content. But I never, ever, click the "I accept" link.

volument
Is it legal to allow tracking by default and omit people with `navigator.doNotTrack` enabled?
Nextgrid
DNT is going away and has already been removed from some browsers because the advertising industry used it as an extra signal to fingerprint browsers.

Regarding the regulation though, tracking is forbidden until explicit consent has been obtained.

Nextgrid
They want to pressure you into giving consent for their advertising & stalking crap, although I have doubts any of this actually works; I bet the tracking bullshit loads by default, does its business, and only gets unloaded when you refuse but the damage is already done.

This behaviour is against the GDPR, not only does consent should be explicitly given (so don't pre-tick the checkboxes or favour the accept button over the refuse one) but also should be given freely so it should not be more inconvenient to refuse than to accept, and finally, no tracking until consent has been given - this includes "strictly necessary" stuff (no it isn't strictly necessary) like Google Analytics.