this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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From time to time, important news gets overshadowed by other headlines, even though it could have a profound impact on our (online) world. To most of us, few things are more bothersome than the dreaded cookie banners. On countless websites, you’re confronted with a pesky pop-up urging you to agree to something. You end up consenting without really knowing what it is. If you try to figure out what’s going on, you quickly get lost among the often hundreds of “partners” who want access to your personal data. Even if you do give your consent, it’s questionable whether you truly understand what you’re agreeing to.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Cookies are old news. What about browser fingerprinting which can track you across websites? https://www.amiunique.org/

There's basically no easy way to safeguard against it without making browsing nearly unusable.

[–] Brumefey 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Yes! You are unique among the 3874720 fingerprints in our entire dataset.

If the website says that I’m unique in green font, it’s actually bad and should be red, isn’t it ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Happened to me, too. Fuck!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

GDPR is regarding personal data, which includes cookies as well as any other fingerprinting. Even though browser fingerprinting does not persist any data on a device itself, explicit consent must be gathered before it's used for processing (i.e. tracking) purposes.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

But why unusable, why does a browser have to leak language, window size, time, extensions? Can't those be spoofed?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

A lot of those things are also required to render a webpage correctly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

But isn't most of that client-side processing? Can't I request a vanilla generic page and once it is in my browser to process it to shape it into the window size and extensions I want? Even if it is an adblocker: serve me the ad, I'll block it internally. But I suppose that for dynamic pages with js requests this would become hard to do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah it's Javascript that's the issue that can just take all this data in the client and send it wherever. And that's exactly what's happening.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I'm not sure a technical solution is feasible, other than dns-blocking these trackers. I suppose lawmakers need to spring into action to make this shit illegal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

You could probably set a cap on how many different fingerprinty attributes a script is allowed to grab before requesting permission from the user.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

You will have your tor-connected 1024x768 anonymous window and you will like it!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

tor-connected

You are unique!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Tor Browser in normal mode is quite usable though, you just can't use extensions and you need to start a new session whenever you use other websites so they can't track you via cookies. Mullvad Browser is quite similar too.

[–] farngis_mcgiles 2 points 5 days ago

oh fuck i'm unique on every browser 😨

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 days ago

This needs to be worldwide.

And... PURGE ALL USER INFORMATION!

I don't care for those 'but what about those people planning/planned crimes?' The one thing I learned from the current Trump administration is that the information is so fucking ripe for abuse AND they don't even catch enough actual crooks that letting a few legit bad people slip through isn't going to bother me.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago (4 children)

wow i didn't know belgium was based. I guess i was wrong when i thought they peaked with french fries

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Also first in Europe to ban lootboxes as gambling, iirc.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Idk, their waffles and chocolates are pretty good too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Belgian craft beers are top notch.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

still pretty tough to beat the fries. I'd say this is a close second.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

Even if idiots with enough money stay unleashed this is great news. One step at a time. Thanks for sharing!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Random side note: how is Belgium to live in and what would it look like to live there right now? Asking for a friend.

Edit: thanks for al the information. I'll move onto learning more about the country and it's people's history.

[–] Brumefey 19 points 6 days ago (2 children)

We have better access to healthcare than France, generally good work-life balance, access to education is cheap (1000 eur for one year at a good university ). People are welcoming but also reserved. It’s raining a lot and we spend a lot of time complaining about it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

I have friends who live there, and they report the same. They visited us for the first time here in London recently, and were quite shocked by the stark differences.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

how is Belgium to live in and what would it look like to live there right now?

It's literally between France, Germany and the Netherlands, I mean geographically yes but roughly culturally too. Arguably Brussels is a mix of all that and other cities again match where they are.

So... it's a Western European country with good quality of life ~~despite~~ thanks to having one of the very highest taxes rate. You don't have to be a socialist to be here but if you want to become a rich entrepreneur it's going to be challenging.

Source : immigrated there from France ~10 years ago.

Edit: s/despite/thanks to/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

it's a Western European country with good quality of life despite having one of the very highest taxes rate.

"Despite"? Try, "because"

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[–] dontbelievethis 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I think you can reap the benefits from just using a VPN and set the country to Belgium?

[–] ohshit604 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Depends on how many sites comply, most will likely block Belgian IP’s due to this.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

but but but how are the corporations supposed to make money off of our data if they can't harvest it? Think of the poor corporations!!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

This needed to happen all over the world like ten years ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago
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