Paying for newspaper "privacy"
Some companies are becoming more deceptive with their cookies. For those who don't know, an internet cookie is a bit of data websites store about you, which can mean easier logging in, targeted ads, the like. It's how websites know who you are when you return to a website after a while, and for this reason it's not surprising they love making you accept all their cookies.
But some websites are frankly taking the biscuit. The Daily Mail, for example - and no, I don't read their news, I just wanted to read their absurd headlines. They've added a roadblock; either you accept their cookies without exception*, or you pay to remove them - except that's a lie:
We may still use cookies and similar technologies to provide our service
is mentioned, so you can end up getting a pointless subscription just to remain where you started.
Note the asterisk from earlier - you can opt out of some cookies, by scrolling down and clicking on Privacy Settings - but the Daily Mail do not make this as clear as they should. They prompt you to "consent to them using [your] browsing data to display personalised advertising and for other purposes" with a massive green box, saying "Accept", so it's not immediately obvious you have an option not to. It would be better if they had a similarly sized box, enabling readers to see where they need to go to deselect the cookies they'd like to remove. I'd imagine the Daily Mail's key users aren't the most tech-informed - average age 56, so many will be much older than that - and are also likely to be able to afford a pointless subscription - 63% are upper to middle class. It's thus easy to get away with such a ploy because most won't bother to scroll down and reject the non-essential cookies, or they'll pay, thinking not getting ads on lawnmowers and dog food is something worth paying. Don't forget - they may still use cookies and similar technologies, it's not like they've forgotten you exist.
The worst part is the Mail aren't the only ones; the Daily Express does the same thing. The Express humorously claim that even if you accept or pay, you'll get the same "quality information every day" - because Noel Edmonds gossip is exactly that. If you want more information, read the terms and conditions, they say, except the cookie banner still obscures the information, so unless you want to flick through the information whilst it resides comfortably in your vision, you have to make your mind up.
Yet here are the details they'd like to hide - you still get ads and they still use cookies, they're merely not personal, which sounds ridiculous. Why should anyone pay and see no discernible difference, it makes me suspect this isn't the whole story. The most important thing for me is the payment - it's scummy and only serves to prove these companies don't care about your privacy, they care about getting your money.
The practice of paying to remove cookies seems to have been imported from Germany, and now all the newspapers want to get in on the action. The Sun, Mirror and Independent all do the same, seemingly to try and recoup the loss of advertising money after readers began rejecting cookies unanimously. With this approach, the newspapers win every day, because either you let them access advertising money or you pay them directly, and I think this is scummy and should be called out.
If the newspapers truly cared about your privacy, surely they wouldn't allow personalised advertising in the first place. They'd remove them, perhaps put in place generic ads, and allow you to reject cookies without the need of a credit card. However, they don't do this, which covertly reveals their main intent - to profit either way.
I use an ad blocker so I don't see any ads, and I stay clear of these newspapers since I don't find their journalism as high-quality as they claim it is. Many, though, won't do either of these things and a small subsection could even decide to pay, just to occasionally read an article they will eventually forget about. The internet should have never got to this point, surely, and as such it's important to try and return it to what it once was.