Irritating Fingerprint

[Red-Coat]

PS: I also tried connecting to the site with my wife's PC (which has the same high security settings as my own). She of course also has the same UK IP address relating to our household ISP.

Same result. The fingerprint icon doesn't appear until after logging in, the Treasurenet site immediately prompts for agreement to data sharing and, after declining and saving, the icon remains. No fingerprint icon seen on any other internet site.

 

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[Red-Coat]

No acknowledgement of my posts.

Thanks... I only just saw that you had helpfully replied.

It's not as straightforward as that on MS Edge. You can switch off site notifications but that then applies globally to all sites... which is not a good idea. You can block all notifications from an individual site, but only if it's a secure site. Treasurenet can't be added to the list because it's perceived as 'insecure' (ie not operating as https). You can delete individual site cookies (Treasurenet tries to offer 14 of them) or block them individually. If you delete, they will come back next time, unless also blocked. Not all cookies are undesirable because some of them are essential to site operation or relate to site features, layout, password storage etc. I'm blocking those which are regarded as non-essential but reluctant to block more because the individual names for those cookies don't make it clear what they are needed for.

Excessive blocking can result in a site refusing connection in Europe... especially if you block things which relate to legal requirements. I'm entirely happy for the site to track my ID such that my data-sharing preferences can be acknowledged and remembered for future sessions (ie I am refusing data-sharing and not wanting to say so each time I connect) in conformance with European law. The site is now doing that without hiccup and I am not being troubled by continual pop-ups from Treasurenet or any other site. I'm now less critical of the unusual/anomalous permanent fingerprint icon linking to those preferences because, subsequent to my initial 'complaint', it has now moved to a more discrete position on the screen (don't know if my 'complaint' was responsible for that change or not).

I'm done, and will now just ignore the icon as an anomaly that presumably relates to the way Treasurenet/its partners have decided to implement their obligations under European law.

 

[Red-Coat]

... and, as of this evening, the icon has disappeared. If someone did something to make that happen... thank you!

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

... and, as of this evening, the icon has disappeared. If someone did something to make that happen... thank you!

Nothing done on this end.

 

[Red-Coat]

Nothing done on this end.

Thanks. All is now good but, for information, I did a little more digging.


Apparently similar request notifications have begun popping up very recently on some other US websites when visited by European users.

They’re being triggered by IP detection. In many cases they specifically say that the user’s IP has been detected as from an EU country, or the UK, and they all specifically make reference to EU Data Protection regulations.

In some cases they refer to those regulations as ‘recent’, which they are not. What is recent is the publication of the EU’s retrospective assessment of the degree of protection that has been afforded to its citizens by the regulations, together with a reinforced message that such protection applies to its citizens, even when their data is harvested and shared outside the EU. (Although the UK has now left the EU, the previous regulations remain enshrined in our law).

It would seem that this has provoked a knee-jerk reaction from US sites (in particular) who are sharing user data with advertising partners, to implement a system to ensure that they are in compliance with our European regulations. The exact format for the notifications varies according to the advertising partners concerned and differs from site to site but the data sharing questions are the same. The format fed from Treasurenet has been observed on at least one other US site, with the same fingerprint icon… presumably because that site is also partnered with one of the same advertisers, or an international agency handling multiple clients.

In all cases, the notifications seem to be as we would expect them in Europe. Enter your preferences for data sharing the first time you connect (for which the defaults must legally be ‘no’), save those preferences, and you’re done. No icon reminder. Except on Treasurenet and at least one other site apparently.

My take would be that this particular format was recently and hastily put together in a panic. Text not properly formatted and didn’t fit within the dialogue box that contained it. Icon badly positioned, and an unnecessary intrusion. Maybe not for all EU users, depending on browser version and settings. Cookie-related software subsequently revised to correct those issues.

As I said, all is now good.