How many times do I have to accept cookies?

[Guest]

Hi Guys,

Since the forum changes I am constantly asked to accept cookies, not every time I visit but maybe 1/3 of the time.

It is beginning to get annoying, not as annoying as Borris but still annoying.

Is this just me?

Cheers

Andy

[BJG145]

I can't say I've noticed, though TBH I always just click "accept all" whenever I see it without even thinking about it.

(Windows 10 / Chrome / Adblock Plus.)

[zenguitar]

I think it is due to the changes in cookie consent rules enforced in recent years. It is something I experience on several sites these days, not just SOS.

Andy

[N i g e l]

I have set my browser to "clear cookies on exit" so i have to click every time I reboot, everywhere, SOS, uTube, everything.

[Folderol]

On SOS you don't need to. Just click on any section and it goes away. It even effectively says that - although this is not strictly compliant with the law.

[OneWorld]

I think it is due to the changes in cookie consent rules enforced in recent years. It is something I experience on several sites these days, not just SOS.

Andy

Yep, that's the irritating bit. Some sites never ask, maybe they are just dumping the cookies on us anyway, some occasionally ask, though despite my going through the options and saving the choices, only to be asked to make the choices again, even though settings had been saved, and some sites ask every time I go to the site, and again I choose and save the options.

It really is getting to the point where I use the internet less and less, and Google, well don't get me started on them. I now just visit a few 'friendly' site SOS included of course and limit my browsing to those sites.

On the internet there's a surfeit of information and not all of it any use. Over the pandemic I was one of those that started baking my own bread etc and growing vegetables and on browsing the web for advice I found there must be 1001 ways of baking a loaf or growing a carrot, that I gave up and used the time old method of 'browsing' - called up a few pals with the relevant expertise and offered to buy them a pint in exchange for their sage advice

[James Perrett]

I've only had to consent to cookies when they've been making changes to the site. This happened fairly often after the last upgrade but I've not seen the cookie consent box for a few weeks now. Do you have the Remember Me box ticked when you sign in?

Ebay is another matter though - I need to consent to cookies daily on there at the moment.

[Eddy Deegan]

I take pains to reject as many cookies as possible on every site I visit and click away from all sites that play fast and loose with the ability to do so. In conjunction with Ublock Origin this makes for a much lighter breadcrumb trail left behind and a far nicer browsing experience all round. I hardly ever see ads anywhere.

However for a site to remember your cookie choice it needs to set a cookie. I suspect most sites put that cookie in the 'essential' category but I also suspect that a lot don't on the premise that you'll get the nag until you give in and accept whatever category they put it in, thus forcing you to accept a bunch of other cookies at the same time.

I have this site whitelisted in uBlock Origin and accept all SOS cookies though, and it never nags me other than on rare occasions when something has changed as James mentioned.

[MOF]

I get more annoyed at having to constantly agree to cookies on every website, though I can’t remember the last time SOS asked me to agree.
I know why it was brought in but I would have thought that those who have such issues could have just used secure web browsing.
N.B. I’m not an expert in such matters so maybe I’m missing something.

[OneWorld]

More annoying is for example.....I recently had some treatment on the NHS, during the course of this treatment I had to disclose my email address, so far so good. But on at least one occasion, when filling in the ubiquitous 'patient survey' I noted it was being handled by a private company, a US company as it happens (I looked them up on the internet)

Just a day after submitted the survey I was waterboarded with a surfeit of claptrap, snakeoil, silver bullet cures, "the only gout powder you'll ever need" and every other unction of potion for everything from a cure for housemaids knee to 50% discount on brain surgery, everyday on opening my mail, in it poured, now it can only have come from one place.

I am getting to the point of setting up a whitelist, and only those on the list can get through, and if anyone really needs me, they know where I live

[Hugh Robjohns]

As I have my own email domains I generally use specific email addresses for things like this -- NHS@robjohns .com etc... (not a real account!)

As the domain admin, any mail to undocumented domain addresses comes to my normal inbox anyway, so I still see any genuine mails, but it's also (a) very obvious which company sold the email address on to spammers if I start getting unsolicited stuff, and (b) very easy to set up a filter to bounce it back or just delete it.

[James Perrett]

Like Hugh, I give anyone who asks for my email a separate address on my domain. However, if you don't have your own domain but are well organised and have a Gmail address you can do something similar. Gmail addresses can contain dots anywhere in the address and you can have more than one dot. So you could have Sample.Email for one sender, SampleEmail for another, Sam.ple.email for another and sample.em.ail for a fourth - and so on. They will all end up at the same place but, if you keep a record of which email was given to who, you know where the leak has come from.

[Eddy Deegan]

I know why it was brought in but I would have thought that those who have such issues could have just used secure web browsing.
N.B. I’m not an expert in such matters so maybe I’m missing something.

Secure web browsing provides effective protection against people snooping on, or modifying, the data between you and the server hosting the site you are browsing. If set up at the server end correctly it also provides a measure of certainty that the site is who they claim to be.

As secure browsing only protects the connection between you and 'the other end', the other end knows exactly what you're doing and looking at anyway.

The cookie rules are intended to address a rather different problem; that of sites (usually advertisers) tracking you over time and building up a picture of the kinds of sites you visit with a view to targetting adverts at you that they think you are more likely to respond to.

Unfortunately it's rather harder to prevent the tracking than it is to protect your connection from unauthorised snoopers. I've seen it written that the EU are looking at tightening the existing rules further with a view to reducing the inconvenience of those annoying cookie preference pages, many of which use layouts designed to trick you into agreeing with something you wouldn't otherwise have done.

Hopefully they will be further restricted from ramming advertising and tracking at us so relentlessly, but we'll see. In the meantime there are great browser add-ons such as uBlock Origin which do a great job of holding the trackers and averts at bay where they are not wanted.

[Forum Admin]

Gmail and most decent email services also allow all addresses with a plus + sign and some text/numbers before the @ symbol to be routed to the original email account.

I use this for beta-testing, but also with online forms to identify unwanted follow-up spam if they sell on your email address.

For example, all of the following will get to the one In Box:

myname@gmail.com
myname+nhs@gmail.com
myname+amazon@gmail.com
myname+az@gmail.com
myname+dvla@gmail.com

The downside is that certain not-so-social companies don't allow such email addresses; or they remove anything after the + sign and bingo, they have a legit email address to spam.

[MOF]

Secure web browsing provides effective protection against people snooping on, or modifying, the data between you and the server hosting the site you are browsing

I thought it stopped any record of your searches, both in local browser cache and on websites i.e. cookies.

[Eddy Deegan]

Secure web browsing provides effective protection against people snooping on, or modifying, the data between you and the server hosting the site you are browsing

I thought it stopped any record of your searches, both in local browser cache and on websites i.e. cookies.

Ah, you mean 'Incognito', aka 'private' mode? I thought you meant SSL (https).

Incognito mode is something else altogether. It is a halfway house that doesn't offer as much privacy as most people think but offers more than if you haven't got it turned on.

Websites you access still know exactly what you're doing and it doesn't block ads but some or all of the tracking during the session will be deleted automatically when you quit the browser or exit back to 'normal' mode.

Your ISP knows which websites you're connecting to (and for how long) but if you're using https:// then they won't know which pages you are accessing there (this is true regardless of whether you're in incognito mode or not).

Cookies from the incognito session are usually deleted automatically, and browsing history from the incognito session isn't saved (but details of this may vary depending on your browser).

Downloads made during an incognito session may still show up in your download history after you've exited incognito mode - again, it depends to some extent on the browser.

Browser plugins may or may not function in incognito mode - usually there is an option per plugin provided by the browser somewhere in 'manage plugins/addons' or equivalent which sets whether that plugin functions when you're in incognito mode.

[MOF]

Ah, you mean 'Incognito', aka 'private' mode? I thought you meant SSL (https).

Thanks for the information Eddy. Yes I meant ’private’ mode.

[Eddy Deegan]

Ah, you mean 'Incognito', aka 'private' mode? I thought you meant SSL (https).

Thanks for the information Eddy. Yes I meant ’private’ mode.

You're welcome and to be clear 'incognito' is the same as 'private' mode in the context of my last post. Different browsers call it different things

Gmail addresses can contain dots anywhere in the address and you can have more than one dot. So you could have Sample.Email for one sender, SampleEmail for another, Sam.ple.email for another and sample.em.ail for a fourth - and so on. They will all end up at the same place but, if you keep a record of which email was given to who, you know where the leak has come from.

In addition, gmail also supports the use of a 'plus' sign after your usual email username. So if your email was (for example) my_username @ gmail.com then you can use my_username+this_site @ gmail.com or my_username+thisthatortheother @ gmail.com .. basically anything you like after the '+' symbol in your username.

It'll all get delivered to you (try it out for yourself first and see) and is another way of associating specific email addresses to specific sites in order to identify those that pass your details on without your knowledge or consent.