Should users trust COOKIES as part of their internet browsing diet?
If I asked you right now how many people do you truly trust, what would you answer? How many people would you trust with making decisions for you, how many know every single thing about you, how many know exactly what you know about yourself and more? Chances are, you named one or two or none in your mind right now. So then, if you don’t allow everyone you know run around with all that you are figured out, for fear that they may use that against you, would you trust an entire public network to know you that well, analyze you and figure out what even you missed?
You fear humans and trust the internet as your best friend, while I’m not implying that internet is the bad guy that you should run from and live in a cave with sticks and stones all your life, you may want to be aware that, behind that best friend of yours there are actually thousands of people.
So, you fear humans, right? But not those behind computers that don’t see you and neither do you, you trust those, right? Did it become scary already? Good.
Ways your data is put out
There are two ways you put yourself out there on the world wide web. First is social media, you promote yourself, it’s solely managed by you, you decide which of your most amazing highlights of your life you share for others to see. Because, let’s face it, everything is better when shared. Secondly, there are cookies which gather information about the user at the point of engaging in a connection with a site. I am going to talk about the latter.
Should users trust cookies as a part of their internet browsing diet?
First, what is a cookie? Something sweet that we take pleasure in, secretly or not, and gives us a moment to entertain our senses. Right?
What do cookies do and how can they mess up your internet browsing diet? Cookies by definition are little files that are being placed on your computer upon connection with a site and stores information such as IP address, preferences and in some cases even your activity on the site. The main reason for that is to ensure the best experience possible for the user while browsing the site. For example, a user may not actually want to have to log in for every action they take on the site or find their shopping cart empty every time they enter a site again and browse again through everything they wanted to buy. For these purposes the so called functional cookies ensure the proper functionality on the site (for which you don’t actually need to give your consent since they are only serving the site’s purpose) and are, in fact, harmless, working in favor of the user’s experience. Another type of cookies, the more harmful one, is the third-party type that can actually connect with other sites and trace your behavior in multiple places on the World Wide Web.
Most people would say they don’t have a real choice in accepting or rejecting cookies since many sites prohibit your access unless you agree with the cookies upon connection. While the European Directive states that it is the user’s choice how his data is being used and he should be able to change it to his preference, this belief has gained popularity among people due to how designers of cookie agreements banners make them look like. The 2009 Directive for Cookies states that “the methods of providing information and offering the right to refuse should be as user-friendly as possible”. However most of the time some text on the bottom of the banner that states in small characters “I refuse cookies” or “Change your settings” doesn’t do the trick. It may be argued that, if it exists, there is no violation of the European Directive, which is in fact true. Still, steering users to click one thing is not an ethical approach to this, especially if we are to also look into what those cookies are used for.
Let’s get technical here for a minute
Behavior on banners for cookies has been analyzed by the JRC (Joint Research Centre), the European Commission science service, and it was discovered that people are severely nudged when it comes to this cookie agreement. The study uses different types of banners by giving a different load of information in a slightly different manner to the user to inform about what cookies do. It aims at analyzing what impact this has on users behavior of accepting cookies and clicking the link for more information about how their data is being used.
The Default method, “by browsing this site you have automatically agreed to the cookie use”, gained 0 rejections for cookie use, being with an average of 40 rejections lower than the rest. For this method, users should go into their browser setting and deactivate them, method that somehow doesn’t comply with the Directive of Cookies since the site hasn’t implemented a “user-friendly” method of blocking cookies.
The Combined coping and threat appraisal method, which tells you what data may be gathered as well as how you can change that, was the one scoring lowest on clicking for more information since the user was already aware of what cookies did and felt in control of his data and scored the highest on rejecting cookies.
From this study it is clear that how designers choose to manipulate the way of presenting the information changes the user’s behavior heavily. That is why I consider that the belief of being obliged to accept cookies has become so popular due to how designers did their job: with a very low, if any, consideration to the user’s experience and values.
The issue we are discussing is given by the previously mentioned third-party cookies that I am going to explain in depth in the following sections of the article.
Something we are all caught up in
Taking the cliche example of Facebook (which is extremely actual since the privacy concern has been targeted at them lately) another site, a blog site, and the user. This is our setup for this study.
When you log in on Facebook, a cookie is placed on your computer which tracks your activity there, what posts you like, who you follow and so on. That cookie is assigned to you as a user, it is basically your ID on the site and every time you like a post for example, that ID identifies it was you who made that action. Now, since the blog site owner wants to gain exposure and engage with the audience, they may opt to put a Facebook share or like button at the end of an article. This action uses what is called the Facebook domain, it’s like they are teaming up with Facebook. The blog site also uses cookies to figure out how to tailor the experience best for you. Because of the fact that there is an item on the page that is “teamed up” with Facebook, when you engage in the connection with the blog post, that item loads and so does the Facebook domain which brings with it what Facebook also knows about you, which is what we named the ID. This is how now Facebook knows you read that article and will consider that part of your identity online which then has an effect on what you are going to see in your feed and recommendations.
Now for the darker side of what those people behind computers that you trust may do…
Having an algorithm trace your every move online means having an algorithm know everything about your interests, personality, preferences and people connections. If a human would know that, they would most likely not know what to do with that much information. However, the algorithm is powerful enough to analyze you based on everything it knows about you and even predict what you may want to see or know online.
If that is not frightening enough for you to click that “Manage settings” button on cookie agreement banners then let me show you another side of it.
There is an actual job called data broker who does exactly what the name says: sells data. Data as in personal data about people, data that is gathered through algorithms, the main medium of gathering it being cookies and trackers, is then sold to companies. Basically the entire profile of you as a person can be solely determined on what they can track about you from your online behavior which is then sold to people who, most of them, need it to tailor their strategies to manipulate users. That goes into the topic of targeted advertising, for example how political parties choose to show more ads or posts on social media to people based on their behavior to trick them into preferring one political side.
Now that you know a narrow slice of what cookies may actually do to your online persona and how they can actually affect what you believe based on news and posts found on platforms, it’s up to you whether you wanna continue allowing their access to your data or want to block them right away.
Just remember to always ask yourself: How much of this is helping me and how much is helping them?
This article was written after extensively researching other people’s discoveries on the topic. The sources of information are linked at keypoints throughout the article and are attached in a full list down below.
I have not conducted any personal research in this field, this article being merely a written discussion on a topic of interest with an attached personal view.
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