A way to adblock “we're using cookies” popups?

If you are already using ublock origin go to settings > filters list > annoyances, turn on easylist-cookies.

The EU cookie laws were well-meaning, but have had the unintended consequence of making the web more annoying, more difficult to use, and more fragmented. We shouldn’t have to resort to ad blockers just to make the web usable again.

The solution? Cookie consent should be a built-in feature of browsers and http, not something that is reimplemented in a slightly different way by every single website.

Your browser should pop up a standardised cookie consent request when you browse a new site, and enforce your selection as part of its security policy. If you choose to block all cookies (ie: private browsing mode) then the cookie consent request wouldn’t need to appear at all.

Yes, quite easily: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about-...

So you mean government involvement in tech both didn’t serve its intended purpose and its an annoyance to the end user? I would have never guessed....

We should encourage the EU to remove this ridiculous requirement.

I use vimium[1] to close most pop-ups by typing "f" and then hitting the letter that pops up next to the close button.

If that doesn't work, I use a bookmarklet called "Remove Sticky"[2]. I type "bre" and hit enter when sticky things pop up to get them gone.

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23446504

I can't believe this isn't handled by the browser. Make a standard API like the location or notification pop ups. Have a setting that says I understand what cookies are and I accept all.

I feel like something should have been implemented at browser level through HTML meta tags to display the cookie banner. This would allow websites to declare technical cookies that cannot be blocked and other cookies that can be blocked by the user. We could even have a standardized, native cookie banner in the same way as the permissions asked by the browser.

Any idea if there's a chance to get this one day?

There’s an “I don’t care about cookies” plugin for Firefox, it just hides the cookie popup. It’s not perfect but works well enough.

For people who are disabled, dismissing cookie dialogs is one extra difficult pointless thing they have to do _every_ time they visit any website.

Is this a violation of human rights?

I would recommend the Consent-O-Matic (https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic) plugin. It doesn't get rid of everything, but it does automatically fill in the forms on practically every website, and you can submit an issue to them when it misses one. I have it set up to automatically deny.

I’ve always thought this should be a browser feature. It would be more useful than the DNT header, anyway...

There is a really frustrating thing happening on this thread where people are downvoting answers that are technically correct, which suggests they must be simply disagreeing with the writers opinion on underlying politics. That is a sad way for hn to go.

They most of the time shouldn't be "we're using cookies (and we've planted all of them without your consent, oops)" anyway, but consent managers.

But yeah, this could be handled in a more user friendly way, if there was a standard way to express the consent options (with the cookies and their functionalities) that the browsers could parse. Then the page could check if the browser handles it or if it has to fall back to what they're doing now.

Any solutions for mobile (iOS)? This problem is really painful on mobile devices where (in Safari) the popup takes up half the screen after the url+nav bars takes up a quarter leaving you with 25% of the screen to look at the actual content (with autoplaying ad videos every few paragraphs if you are lucky!) until you dismiss the popup.

Argh, makes me angry just thinking about it. The web is becoming increasingly painful to use through a UI browser.

For "manual" cleanup I'm using slightly extended universal "Sweep Stickies" bookmarklet [1], based on idea taken from "Kill Sticky" [0]. Removes generally all those banners and overlays obscuring content and eating viewport. (Userscript available [2], but I prefer good old bookmarklet way for this.)

It literally crawls all elements in page, tests their computed style and removes those with sticky position (and a bit more). Works quite well for me.

[0] https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ [1] http://myfonj.github.io/utils/bookmarklets/sweep-stickies.ht... [2] https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/370572-sweep-stickies

Try These,

- For Safari, if you're using 1Blocker, in "General" > "Block Annoyances".

- For NextDNS, I thought I saw "Annoyances" but could not find it now. Should have it somewhere.

- Chrome have a plethora of Extensions that "don't care about cookies" or similar. Other than that, as someone else commented, uBlock Origin > Settings > Filters List > Annoyances

Depending on how bad the warning is, it might be easier to disable javascript. Have found that this gets around some noiser news sites.

Still have to click to remove it the first time, but I made an extension for this very purpose: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ekill/lcgdpfaiipae...

Check out Cliqz Autoconsent: https://github.com/cliqz-oss/autoconsent

This is a library of rules for navigating through common consent popups on the web. These rules can be run in a Firefox webextension, or in a puppeteer orchestrated headless browser. Using these rules, opt-in and opt-out options can be selected automatically, without requiring user-input.

This library is primarily used by the cliqz browser in order to automate user-consent, and make a cleaner browsing experience. There is also a standalone addon that can be installed in Firefox.

I'm tired or ad blockers, they make the page usually slower to load. Even if they save you some downloading, they usually block the loading pipeline, so they end up costing you more time. I use a combination of "I don't care about cookies" to automatically accept all cookies, so websites are free to show the ads they want and send me the cookies they want. Then I use Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protection in strict mode to delete all tracking cookies as I go. It has worked great so far. Yes, I see ads, but they're not targeted and the page loads fast.

I use Safari User Stylesheet. This is mine:

  /* "custom" */
  [class*="as-oil"]:not(body, html),
  [class*="optanon"]:not(body, html),

  /* "generic" */
  [class*="consent"]:not(body, html),
  [id*="consent"],
  [class*="gdpr"]:not(body, html),
  [id*="gdpr"],
  [class*="announcement"]:not(body, html),
  [id*="announcement"],
  [class*="policy"]:not(body, html),
  [id*="policy"],
  [class*="cookie"]:not(body, html),
  [id*="cookie"] {
   display: none!important;
   visibility: hidden!important;
   transform: scale(0)!important;
   opacity: 0!important;
   width: 0!important;
   height: 0!important;
   z-index: -1!important;
   background: transparent!important;
   color: transparent!important;
   font-size:0!important;
  }

1Blocker for iPhone filters most “we’re using cookies” annoyances.

At this point we're better off building a samizdat-like shadow WWW which simply loads the genuine content by using the URL as a content identifier, but without relying on the HTTP server on port 443 on the A or AAAA record mentioned in the domain. URLs are also URIs, after all, and nobody said we have to put up with broken servers being the only content resolver available.

I never get Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on my door to talk about Jesus anymore.

Instead I have the EU asking me about Cookies on every other web page.

Yes. Install uBlock Origin. Right click on ad / pop up -> Block Element ( a rule is automatically generated ) -> Create. Voila ! You might have to do it 2-3 times for the same element as it might have several layers. But then you're done and you haven't been forced into clicking. "ok"

I use "Banner Hunter" for Safari which does just this and nothing else. Unfortunately it will sometimes leave the websites unusable because it removes the modal cookie banners but not the "greying out" layer over the content that disables it while the banner is visible...

Thank you.

There are numerous sites I go to regularly incognito to log in as an admin vs. end-user: several have low-profile, low-contrast cookie warnings which disable all other menus until you acknowledge them (without an apparent overlay). Just that little extra bit of friction every day adds up.

In addition to taking whatever technical measures you are taking, if you're in the EU, consider also grabbing one web site that has a particularly bad consent flow (e.g. a dozen clicks to not get tracked, or a "click or scroll anywhere to consent"), and report them to the appropriate DPA.

The DPAs often only work off consumer reports.

You need to know that these popups are a result of two separate laws: The ePrivacy directive aka Cookie Law, and GDPR. GDPR is enforceable one that you care about. A web site can process your data (e.g. for personalized ads) for one of the explicitly given reason, the most common ones being "legitimate interest", "fulfillment of a contract" and "consent".

There have been a couple recent statements about what counts and doesn't count as legitimate interest, fulfilling a contract, and consent.

You also have the right to ask the controller of the data (not the processor) for a list of data stored about you. Try it with one of said web sites! Make a clean cookie jar, use the site and only the site, send them the cookie jar, and see what data they store. (If they don't, file a complaint with the DPA)

When my browser just hides the popup or banner, which setting did I choose?

The GDPR is pretty clear that opting out must be the default choice, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some use a system that only follows that if it is actually shown.

Import the following filter list into uBlock Origin: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

Most cookie popups are using javascript so when one is popping up i use the chrome extension "Quick Javascript Switcher" to toggle the Javascript off. This does not always work but it works in most cases.

I tried external list for Ublock as well. They say they will remove those things but they sometimes break things. Video's or slideshows for example did not seam to work when Ublock removed the cookie pup-ups.

I use "I don't care about cookies" extension for Firefix, seems to work well.

Don't drag the GDPR through this mess. It's not the fault of the GDPR that everyone decided that these cookie consent walls are the new normal.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/06/no-cookie-consent-walls-an...

1. Cookie policy management should be done at browser level with using standard HTML/JS constructs. Instead, everyone nowadays is doing it by adding custom HTML to their own pages to handle the panel/popup logic: they're doing it wrong, because it makes it much harder to detect which part of the page hosts the cookie settings panel.

2. Also, many of those panels have "Accept all" as a default option. Many make it purposely hard to disable some trackers without going deep down into crowded cookies preference pages. This is also the wrong way of complying to GDPR, and the sites that do it must be appropriately punished. The default should be "Deny all except for non-third-party functional cookies".

3. In the meantime, NoScript helps blocking some of that crap. If you never whitelist domains like cookielaw.com you're unlikely to see many of them.

> The EU cookie laws were well-meaning, but have had the unintended consequence of making the web more annoying, more difficult to use, and more fragmented.

Not really. GDPR says that non-transactional cookies should default off.

except giving me more troubles whether as a developer or a web surfer, I don't know what value is given by GDPR

My heritage is of a web that worked just fine without cookies at all.

Contact the EU and tell them to remove that non-sense rule as it makes the internet waste time clicking annoying things that nobody reads or cares.