Essential cookies
Discussion
How do companies decide which cookies are so essential I can't opt out of having them?
From the BBC (as an example):
ckns_profile: Indicates that the Children’s Profile is currently active, rather than the signed in Parent Account. - This seems essential for protecting children
ckns_acad-gateway: Academy page language setting. - This seems essential, except I have never been on their academy page
atidvisitor / atuserid / idrxvr: The BBC’s analytics system uses cookies to gather information regarding visitor activity on the BBC's websites and other BBC online services. The data gathered is sent to AT Internet, the BBC's analytics partner, for analysis and reporting. The BBC uses this information to help improve the services it provides to its users. - This does not seem like it is essential to provide a service to me. Why is it essential that they give my data to a third party without my consent and what do they do with it?
From the BBC (as an example):
ckns_profile: Indicates that the Children’s Profile is currently active, rather than the signed in Parent Account. - This seems essential for protecting children
ckns_acad-gateway: Academy page language setting. - This seems essential, except I have never been on their academy page
atidvisitor / atuserid / idrxvr: The BBC’s analytics system uses cookies to gather information regarding visitor activity on the BBC's websites and other BBC online services. The data gathered is sent to AT Internet, the BBC's analytics partner, for analysis and reporting. The BBC uses this information to help improve the services it provides to its users. - This does not seem like it is essential to provide a service to me. Why is it essential that they give my data to a third party without my consent and what do they do with it?
Mr Penguin said:
atidvisitor / atuserid / idrxvr: The BBC’s analytics system uses cookies to gather information regarding visitor activity on the BBC's websites and other BBC online services. The data gathered is sent to AT Internet, the BBC's analytics partner, for analysis and reporting. The BBC uses this information to help improve the services it provides to its users. - This does not seem like it is essential to provide a service to me. Why is it essential that they give my data to a third party without my consent and what do they do with it?
Should they not state what data is collected and passed on to the third party?The worst example of this I found is TCF
Literally hundreds of options to turn on / off just to be able to browse websites.
I honestly wouldn't waste your life worrying about it.
Third party cookies, yes, block those. Those are the ones that track you from one website to another.
But the ones the website that you are visiting uses, don't worry about them.
It's like a man standing at the side of the road counting the cars that drive on it. He may count cars of different makes, he may count how many people were in each car. He can then report this data to the council or some other traffic authority who can then use that data to decide how and whether the road needs improving, or whatever. He is not tracking you personally. He doesn't care who you are, no-one is going to come knocking on your door and ask why you were driving on that road at that time. No-one cares about that.
It's the same with websites. These cookies are used for analytics. The BBC or whoever it is, can decide what pages are working, whether one layout is better than another, and so on. To do that they need to know what all the unique visitors are doing as a group, and to know one visitor from another they have to give them a unique identifier. That's what some of these labels are in the cookies.
Blocking these cookies might stop them from counting you in their stats, but does it gain you anything? No, it's just a waste of your time. The fact that you visited a page on a website, or didn't, doesn't make it *your* data. Stop worrying about it.
Third party cookies, yes, block those. Those are the ones that track you from one website to another.
But the ones the website that you are visiting uses, don't worry about them.
It's like a man standing at the side of the road counting the cars that drive on it. He may count cars of different makes, he may count how many people were in each car. He can then report this data to the council or some other traffic authority who can then use that data to decide how and whether the road needs improving, or whatever. He is not tracking you personally. He doesn't care who you are, no-one is going to come knocking on your door and ask why you were driving on that road at that time. No-one cares about that.
It's the same with websites. These cookies are used for analytics. The BBC or whoever it is, can decide what pages are working, whether one layout is better than another, and so on. To do that they need to know what all the unique visitors are doing as a group, and to know one visitor from another they have to give them a unique identifier. That's what some of these labels are in the cookies.
Blocking these cookies might stop them from counting you in their stats, but does it gain you anything? No, it's just a waste of your time. The fact that you visited a page on a website, or didn't, doesn't make it *your* data. Stop worrying about it.
I once ran a website with a privacy statement along the lines of
“Please click Yes to accept cookies on this site. Like most modern websites, we use cookies to track your activity on the internet, share your personal details and access your financial accounts”
Only a couple of people ever noticed it
“Please click Yes to accept cookies on this site. Like most modern websites, we use cookies to track your activity on the internet, share your personal details and access your financial accounts”
Only a couple of people ever noticed it
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