Feb 15, 2021 20:00:00

What will you accept if you select 'Accept all cookies'?

Under the data protection regulation

GDPR enacted in 2016, the EU required user consent in order for the website to target using the user's cookie . As of 2021, online identifiers such as cookies and IP addresses do not fall under the category of personal information in Japan, and user consent is not required for use by companies, but similar legislation is expected to be enacted in the near future. It is

A software developer and entrepreneur asked what the user consented to when they clicked on the 'accept all cookies' option in the 'cookie consent' options displayed to website visitors. Mr. Conrad Akunga, who is a house, explains the website of Reuters as an example.

What Do You Actually Agree To When You Accept All Cookies | Conrad Akunga, Esquire.
http://www.conradakunga.com/blog/what-do-you-actually-agree-to-when-you-accept-all-cookies/

When you visit the website, you may see the following banner at the bottom of the screen. By clicking this 'Accept All Cookies', the user agrees to the content presented by the website, but what do many people agree / disagree with? Making a choice without understanding

So Akunga scrutinized what Reuters presented. In addition, Mr. Akunga chose Reuters not because ``especially because Reuters presents problematic content'', but because most websites present content similar to Reuters. That's what I mean.

When I displayed the Reuters banner in detail, the titles 'European Union Individuals' and 'Right to Withdraw Consent under GDPR' were displayed. In addition, since GDPR is valid within the EU, the same screen will not be displayed in Japan. Move the scroll bar on the right side and move it to the bottom of the screen ......

First, a button called 'Allow All' is displayed. I could have clicked the button here without reading any further, but it would scroll further.

Items written about 'sale of personal information' ... ...

The item 'Accessing data stored on the device'.

Sections that read 'personalized advertising and content, advertising and content measurement,

audience insights and product development.'

In addition, items that can be selected to agree or disagree are lined up in detail.

Finally, you can click the 'Reject All' and 'Confirm My Choices' buttons. It is said that there are many people who select 'reject all' without checking the details in detail.

Mr. Akunga summarizes the above and states that consent primarily relates to:

・The collection of user data by the website
・Website use of user data
- the website is affiliated with various partners for the above purposes;
・The website uses cookies to store data on the user's device
・Some cookies are necessary for the website (the purpose depends on the website), and this 'essential cookie' cannot be turned off.
・Some of your personal information may be sold to partners to provide relevant content.
・Even if you can personalize the advertisement, you cannot remove the advertisement from the display of the website.

Who is the person the website describes as a 'partner'? So you can check it from the place called 'List of IAB Vendors'. Click...

It was listed as follows. You can tell by the small scrollbar that the list of partners is huge.

Because the amount of the list is so huge, Mr. Akunga decided to extract the list using Chrome's developer tools. When displaying Elements with F12, there was a character 'vendors-list-container' in HTML.

When I extracted the data and pasted it into the file, it seems that the text reached 54,399 lines. And when extracting the URLs of companies linked as partners from the text, Akunga reported that the number was 647 in total. In the blog, the URLs of all 647 companies

are published .

Each of the 647 companies has its own privacy policy, and in order to understand all the cookie consents shown by Reuters, it is necessary to read all of these 647 companies' privacy policies. Of course, such a task is impossible for most people.

Akunga explains that by serving multiple websites, these vendors will be able to track users across websites and identify browsers and devices. In other words, when a user accesses a website and says 'accept all cookies', hundreds of companies, including well-known companies such as Adobe, Amazon, Google, Huawei, Oracle, and Salesforce, start processing the user's data. That's it. Akunga also pointed out that the website does not allow 'essential cookies' to be turned off, but that users are not informed of the use or information of these essential cookies.