This very explicit cookie consent / surveillance message jarred me a little today. All I wanted to do was read a single article on Teen Vogue of all places. Doing so by default would entail my personal data being sent to 143 different companies, including active scans of my devices and my precise geographic location at the time. Whilst “caring about my privacy”.
I’m sure Teen Vogue is no worse than its peers. I actually applaud the explicitness of the message. We should know exactly what we’re agreeing to when we mindlessly hit the “yes ok sure if you must” button whilst surfing.
If you hit “Show Purposes” you get a list of the types of information being shared. Some, but not all, of them you can disable. But just for fun, here’s the list. The numbers in brackets after each one shows the number of partners that are allowed to use whatever they can scrape about me from my web visit for the given purpose.
- Functional Cookies
- Performance Cookies
- Targeting Cookies
- Strictly Necessary Cookies
- Audience Measurement
- Store and/or access information on a device (“131 partners can use this purpose”)
- Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development. (140)
- Use precise geolocation data (50)
- Actively scan devices characteristics for identification (15)
- Ensure security, prevent and detect fraud, and fix errors (106)
- Delivery and present advertising and content (92)
- Match and combine data from other sources (89)
- Link different devices (87)
- Identify devices based on on information transmitted automatically (94)