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Ask HN: What percentage of users click 'Reject All'?

28 points by MarkMc ↗ HN
When requesting use of personal data on websites it's becoming standard now to have an 'Accept All' and 'Reject All'.

If you run a website, what percentage of uses click 'Accept All' and what percentage click 'Reject All'?

41 comments

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saurik
It's probably just me, and even I don't have a 100% success rate.
Smithalicious
I have been conditioned to click "accept all" because at some point clicking "reject all" almost always lead me to a page saying that I can't use the site without cookies. I don't think this is as universal anymore but I haven't de-conditioned myself yet.
joe__f
I always press reject all, and if it doesn't let me use the site I find a different one normally
Aisen8010
Is there a browser or extension that selects 'Reject All' for me?
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ThePhysicist
Our stats for heyklaro.com are public [1], the acceptance rate is around 50 %. We've always had a dialog with one-click Accept / Reject flow, even before it became officially mandated. We see similar rates for our customers.

1: https://heyklaro.com/demo

autoexec
How do you log the people who just bypass the thing entirely? Any cookie banners my ad-blocker doesn't kill automatically, I just right click on and remove from the page.
ThePhysicist
The statistic only logs the ratio between accept & reject choices. We also record the showing of the dialogue (and users that go into the modal and customize choices), it's just not shown there. Ignoring the consent banner is fine and should not impact the functionality of the website.
ponyous
I did some research recently and found 50-60% to be the norm. On top of that if I remember correctly more than 50% of the websites didn’t even respect the choice.

Don’t quote me. Do your own research.

bravetraveler
I generally will manually set it to minimum

Too often 'reject all' doesn't do what it leads you to believe. I don't have incentive to allow any of it

Edit: It's often a ruse anyway. Either changing nothing or not working until you reload, if I remember correctly

nottorp
I click on reject all, if there is no reject all button i do click details and if i don't find a way to turn off everything on the first details page I close the site unread.

Also, if your popup says "we care about your privacy" please remove that lie. If you cared about my privacy you wouldn't track me.

muzani
Cookies are often used for sessions too, not just tracking. I wish the browser world just tightened up its permissions like the mobile world did.
rlpb
If a session is required to service a user's explicit request (eg. "add item to basket" but not "track user for ads") then explicit consent isn't required. The user's explicit request is enough. So there's no conflict.
muzani
Ah I wasn't aware of that requirement. I thought the pop up was whenever they use cookies for anything (because that is what they make you believe).
jackbrookes
If this was the case, we could just build the cookie consent mechanism into browsers
nottorp
Stuff required for the actual functioning of the site is explicitly exempted in the GDPR. Generally speaking, do not take your information from whoever is selling you something... or is selling you.
ratg13
OP is asking for data that you have collected, not your personal preference.

The preferences of the crowd here are largely irrelevant, as the people that frequent this website are typically not average web users.

jokethrowaway
I don't care, I click on whatever gets the popup away

Accept generally works better, sometimes you get more crap when you reject. Oftentimes you can't even find reject very easily

marssaxman
I just zap the popups away using uBlock Origin, without clicking any option.
dyingkneepad
Can you please describe what exactly you mean by "zap the popup away using uBlock Origin"?
marssaxman
uBlock Origin offers two element-picker modes. The lightning-bolt tool deletes whatever you click on, adding a rule blocking that element for future visits. The eyedropper tool does the same, with a preview option and more control over the selector you filter out; this is useful with modal overlays, where the prompt itself may be nested in a screen-filling div, blocking the underlying content.

I use these features liberally - for cookie notices, "subscribe to our newsletter" nag boxes, sticky bottom banners, chatbot requests, and everything else which gets in the way.

In addition to per-site rules, I have a blanket block on OneTrust, which seems to be the most popular cookie nag system:

  *###onetrust-consent-sdk
wayvey
I do most of the time but I should probably just use some extension to hide the popups or just block cookies in general
liminalsunset
I use Temporary Containers on Firefox, so the cookies are deleted after I am done anyway.

I always click Accept All to make it go away, if I didn't have the uBlock filter that blocks the popups altogether.

rlpb
Is that "Accept all cookies" or "Accept all our terms, not just about cookies but also our rights to your first born"? Did you check?

My point is that an "accept all" reflex isn't necessarily safe even if you don't retain cookies.

EEBio
Given that we are talking about a website, what is the worst legal enforceable thing you could agree to in this way?

Things like “rights to your first born” are illegal and unenforceable.

“you must visit the site everyday from now on” is unenforceable.

“or we close your account” - they don’t need your consent for that

Kim_Bruning
I generally switch to firefox <readability mode>.

It helpfully removes both the popup and the tracking.

dadoum
When it's too hard to disable cookies, I just disable JavaScript and it works 80 % of time, + it often free up the space on the page.
Nextgrid
My ad-blocker takes care of the majority of these, but if some slip through I will do my best to find the "reject all" option or navigate away if it isn't there. It's unlikely to show up in metrics though because whatever is supposed to collect those metrics would be blocked anyway.
forgotmypw17
I have made it a personal philosphy to close any site which hassles me one of these, and the same for sign up for our newsletter.

I have noticed that the quality of material I read has gone up in the process.

harel
I get cookie rage. Some I already know to click details and immediately save for a minimal default. Some I randomly select whatever, some I accept. Then I get asked the same from the same site the next day. I hate this so much that I get desensitized to all forms of tracking.
Kenneth39
Of course, the pop-up cookies are annoying, and I could say I don't think about them at all.

Most of the time, I click the first thing that comes up. However, I have noticed that this only happens on trusted sites.

On sites I don't know, I prefer to either close the window or "reject all." But how it pisses me off!