browser extension to auto-reject all tracking/legitimate interest cookies etc.

Gorbash12346 · 24 Jun 2021 at 17:42

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been asked before but is there a plugin or something that can be used for automatically rejecting cookies and so called 'legitimate interest' cookies etc?

I've reached a point where I am completely sick of having to navigate through increasingly more awkward menus just to do this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

Silicon Si · 24 Jun 2021 at 17:45

Just use a private window it does not keep cookies

Rainmaker · 25 Jun 2021 at 12:14

Global Privacy Control is aiming to become a standard for this. It's a protocol designed by (among others) DuckDuckGo, Brave, EFF and Mozilla. You install an extension which sends the GPC signal to each website you visit. This implies that you reject all third party data sharing, all cookie and other tracking, and so on. While it's not widely adopted yet, it is gaining momentum and ought to be considered a legal statement on your behalf under GDPR/California privacy laws/change as appropriate.

In the interim, you can harden your local setup to resist tracking in this way and remove the annoying pop ups.

1) Install a browser that's useful for privacy, like Firefox with Fission enabled (strict site isolation), or Brave.
2) Regardless of browser, install CookieAutoDelete which removes all cookies on each domain change (you can set it to whitelist those sites you use directly).
3) Install uBlock Origin and enable uBlock annoyances list to stop connections to third party tracking domains and avoid cookie pop ups.

There's a lot more you can do but with those minimal steps you should be good to go. You'll no longer connect to trackers and third party domains, you'll not be visible to tracking companies as you move around the web, and all cookies you don't explicitly set (like login cookies) will disappear as you move from site to site. uBO will ensure you don't see loads of the cookie pop ups (which are now useless, as you're not storing cookies anyway).

chrcoluk · 25 Jun 2021 at 12:17

Lawmakers are in a tough place, if they legislate that no track requests have to be legally honoured a website can quite easily refuse you to visit their site if you decide to not opt out.

Rainmaker · 25 Jun 2021 at 12:36

chrcoluk said:
Lawmakers are in a tough place, if they legislate that no track requests have to be legally honoured a website can quite easily refuse you to visit their site if you decide to not opt out.

No track requests already have to be honoured, they're just manual at this moment in time. That's what's happening while you're clicking those (often illegally formatted) cookie choice menus. Once you say you don't want tracking and profiling and you don't wish to accept non-essential cookies you've made a legally binding statement. Some websites do choose to block based on this, or based on your geographic location ("We see you're in Europe, and we don't like not being able to track you and sell your data, so we're blocking your visit"). I can't say that's a site I care that I'm missing, there's millions of decent websites with good content available, without having to sell your soul to the devil.

V F · 25 Jun 2021 at 20:21

chrcoluk said:
Lawmakers are in a tough place, if they legislate that no track requests have to be legally honoured a website can quite easily refuse you to visit their site if you decide to not opt out.

Sometimes in certain ways in certain circumstances I miss the old web. Region locked Internet and endless popup notifactions from so many sites now.

Danny75 · 26 Jun 2021 at 06:09

Using Brave browser private window for most things, haven't had the need for UBlock etc in a while now. Just had to disable hardware acceleration in settings as it was causing a youtube playback issue.

Gorbash12346 · 26 Jun 2021 at 10:24

Thanks Rainmaker/all I'll give that try.

The way that some websites are making it nearly or completely impossible to block some cookies is disgusting. The one that really p***ed me off was lights.co.uk . They have made it impossible to disable 4 or 5 tracking cookies while giving the illusion of a choice until you try to click off.

chrcoluk · 26 Jun 2021 at 11:35

V F said:
Sometimes in certain ways in certain circumstances I miss the old web. Region locked Internet and endless popup notifactions from so many sites now.

Used severn trent water earlier today to report a fault, and the select location page was blank, I thought got to be cookies prompt, turned of cosmetic filtering in ublock, bam the prompt appears, I select the options and the site starts working.