Is this extension too complicated?

[kwyntes]

I'm sorry if this is a really stupid issue, but I feel like this extension is way overcomplicated. Why would anyone need support for specifically selecting cookies to allow? Doesn't everyone just deny all of them? Making a consent handler that goes through the entire dialogue clicking buttons and settings sliders and stuff doesn't seem logical when most (or at least most that I come across) simply contain a button to deny everything. I understand that these measures are still needed for the more annoying popups that don't feature such option, yet I believe this procedure is currently also employed for a few popups that do in fact have one.

On a related note, I'm curious as to why there are seperate matchers for detecting when the popup exists on the page and when it is actually showing. Wouldn't it be enough to only account for the latter?

[svnhub]

There is no standardized and automated way to give consent to GDPR processing in the EU, so each and every website has to ask for your permission to process your data if they want to comply with the rules. This add-on is just a part of a research effort trying to figure out how good websites are at following those rules and how difficult it is to provide consent based on your own personal preferences.

You are very likely correct that many people, if given an unbiased choice, would choose not to be tracked and not to provide 3rd parties with information. But the popups offered by websites are typically not unbiased like that - they are using dark patterns to try to coerce people to allow consent. We are trying to provide this unbiased choice in the form of the add-on - and we are doing our very best to try to follow people's choices whenever possible, and err on the side of caution when in doubt.

There are other add-ons that try to hide the popups or simply try to click accept to everything to get rid of them as quickly as possible. We have taken a different path exactly to show how stupendously difficult a task it would be to do this properly - and to uncover and document the many different ways Consent Management Providers (CMPs) try to trick us.

Historically, even if you click "reject all" some CMPs still share your data with 3rd parties unless you explicitly disallow them from doing so by refusing to acknowledge their claim of legitimate interest in your data. We believe that this behavior is illegal but it has yet to be challenged in court so a lot of them are still doing it.

On the question on why there are two detectors: I'm not sure - sometimes a CMP may be present but closed. Another dev will have to answer that one.

[kwyntes]

Thanks for the reply! So this addon isn't solely for the purpose of making one's life easier by not having to click through dialogs manually if I understand correctly. Are you guys planning to do anything with the results of the research? Like use it in a legal issue about cookie consent forms?