Since the beginning of this year, many of the larger news media websites in Spain have gone over to a policy of ‘accept all our and our so-called partners cookies and trackers‘ or pay.

This approach, although technically legal, is not necessarily considered to be within the ‘spirit’ of the data protection legislation introduced in Spain. The idea, apparently, was that visitors to sites should have a choice, such as ‘accept all’, ‘reject all’, ‘essential only’ or ‘pay’. However, as with all legislation, the first task is to seek a way round it.

Even (?) Facebook was fairly quick to introduce an ‘accept our ads etc’ or ‘subscribe’ for the European market.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) reportedly takes issue with large online platforms confronting users with a choice between consenting to the processing of their personal data for behavioural advertising purposes and paying a fee.

Since a couple of days ago, several UK online media outlets have suddenly taken to this ‘accept or pay’ approach. These include the MailOnline, Daily Express and Daily Mirror. Faced with the prospect of allowing 1,500 or more entities track you across the entire internet and gather your personal data as they do so, perhaps people will become a little more circumspect.

The EDPB also reportedly states: “The offering of (only) a paid alternative to the service which includes processing for behavioural advertising purposes should not be the default way forward for controllers. If controllers choose to charge a fee for access to the ‘equivalent alternative’, controllers should consider also offering a further alternative, free of charge, without behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving the processing of less (or no) personal data.”

I suppose we will be rearranging the words ‘chance’ and ‘fat’ for a while on that one.

Still plenty of free outlets around, ones that do not (yet) game the system, though. Going ‘incognito/private’ will not stop you being tracked, of course, it just keeps your browsing history private once you finish a session. A VPN, or VPN + incognito is another matter entirely. Or using a private, security-driven search engine such as DuckDuckGo which, in most circumstances, is as good as those of the ‘big boys’. Use all three and maybe, just maybe, they will not get as much information about your habits. Probably got the bulk of it by now, though…

The DuckDuckGo browser is actually remarkably good, been using it for a lot of things since the early invite and beta days.