Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out

Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by dec0dedab0de on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:09PM (#47767510)

I mean duh, but also this seems like a fairly weak gotcha. Cookies != Tracking, they can track you just fine without cookies, and they can use cookies without tracking you.

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by benrutter on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:14PM (#47767564)

> Cookies != Tracking, they can track you just fine without cookies

That's probably true, but not what the articles reporting:

> 55 percent of the sites it checked set ad cookies in a user’s browser even if they opted out of tracking

So essentially, it's ignoring user preference directly, not just in spirit.

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by Balinares on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:25PM (#47767709)

"Legitimate interest."

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by tlibert on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:48PM (#47768049)

That concept is applicable to the European Union, doesn't apply in California.

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by rockskon on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:12PM (#47767547)

Cooking != Tracking?

That's historically been a very prominent purpose of cookies.

Sure it's not exclusively tracking, but it's nonsense to make the assertion that "Cookies != Tracking"

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by tlibert on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @01:02PM (#47768244)

Cookies serve a lot of valuable purposes, it's important to disambiguate.

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by rockskon on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @01:27PM (#47768525)

Sure. But given the lack of specificity from the person I was responding to, it felt important to correct.

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by dec0dedab0de on Wednesday April 15, 2026 @10:30AM (#47779525)

Sure it's not exclusively tracking, but it's nonsense to make the assertion that "Cookies != Tracking"

They're not primarily for tracking either.

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[dead]

Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by zbentley on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:21PM (#47767661)

I'm curious why this was downvoted--I'm not complaining or trying to go against HN guidelines; I'm genuinely unclear as to why the first-party source for the article clarifying the question in GP was marked dead. Bad actors? Misinterpretation? Other?

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Op... by tlibert on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:42PM (#47767966)

No idea, I thought it was a valid question and we go to great lengths in our methodology for this reason. The audits we supply for enterprise are highly specific as to cookie purpose for this reason: https://webxray.ai

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