Many people are familiar with it: Once you looked for shoes in an internet shop, the products followed you across the web in the form of advertising banners. Cookies make this possible. On the Internet, however, they are neither sweet nor tasty, they are just annoying. Companies use web cookies to analyze the surfing behavior of Internet users. Resistance is possible – but the advertising industry is always coming up with new tricks.
Cookies are small data sets that are saved by the browser when you visit a website. They also have practical functions. They make it possible for the web shop to “remember” which products are in the shopping cart, even though the computer has been switched off in the meantime. Unfortunately, from the consumer’s point of view, the annoying functions now outweigh the useful ones.
The info monsters have become prominent through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has been in force in Europe for three years. Because cookies are still one of the most common methods of collecting personal data on the Internet, they are subject to the regulation – even though they are not mentioned in the rules. Since then, a cookie consent pops up on every website: with which the user is more or less gently urged to approve the use of cookies on the respective page.
Those who take care of their own data protection can even save money
Even if you object to the use of cookies: It is more than likely that some will end up in memory anyway. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) therefore recommends setting the Internet browser so that cookies are deleted each time the program is closed. With Chrome, this works via the three-point menu in the top right corner. There you will find the item “Data protection and security” in the settings with the sub-menu “Cookies and other website data”. At Safari, the number two in Germany, there is the “Data protection” item in the “Settings” menu. In Microsoft Edge, the function can also be found in the settings under “Data protection, search and services”. These tips also apply to smartphones and tablets. Anyone who surfs on the move without cookies via a browser instead of using the apps from Amazon, Zalando & Co. is safer on the go.
Using it for your own data protection can even save you money. “In this way, surfers avoid, for example, portal operators showing them higher prices every time they view a page, because they assume that their great interest also means greater willingness to pay,” explains Tatjana Halm, Head of Market and Law at the Bavarian Consumer Agency.
A look at the cookies can also be quite informative: Sometimes all tracking data sets that are used on the respective website are explicitly listed – and their number can quickly reach several hundred. Since the rejection is often laborious with many mouse clicks, the acceptance only succeeds with one, efforts are being made to generally only have two buttons for consent and rejection. “If you want to reject all unnecessary cookies, you often have to fight your way through a jungle of options,” says Anna Gallina, Senator for Consumption Protection in Hamburg. “We want to ensure that this is also possible with one click in the future.”
There are cookies that are essential for a website to function – for example, to save information about the type of browser. Such “necessary cookies” can usually not be rejected in the cookie notice. Then there are small data monsters that are not absolutely necessary, but help the site operator to optimize the offer: performance, analysis or statistics cookies, for example. Finally, marketing cookies are responsible for ensuring that advertising is personalized, sometimes also on other websites.
Third-party cookies, also known as third-party cookies, undoubtedly have the worst reputation. Their sole purpose: to spy on the user by creating a possible precise profile – which is then also hawked among advertisers with the highest bidder. Well-known browsers such as Firefox or Safari have been blocking third-party cookies by default for some time. Google’s market leader Chrome will block third-party cookies later this year.
Users can be identified with a probability of 99 percent
Advertisers are already talking about the “cookie calypse”. Browser providers would sweep existing standards off the table “and thus make life more difficult for most market participants along the advertising value chain,” said marketing specialist Benjamin Bunte in a guest article for the industry magazine W&V recently. Consumer advocate Halm assumes that advertisers are looking for other ways of evaluating surfing behavior on the Internet, which is also known as tracking. “It is not to be assumed that the tracking will go away, but only that the way it is going will change.”
Fingerprinting is a new method of identifying users – without cookies. Anyone surfing the net reveals so much information without doing anything – their own browser, the resolution of their display, the time zone and more – that a digital fingerprint can be formed from it. According to Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox browser, a combination of all data in this way can identify Internet users with a probability of 99 percent.
If you don’t believe it: On the website Coveryourtracks.eff.org of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), anyone can test what their browser reveals about them. The data protection organization also offers the additional program Privacy Badger for the most common browsers. This allows cookies to be blocked – but this app does not offer any protection against a digital fingerprint either. With the new methods used by advertisers, the battle for the identity of the users is entering the next round.