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SE's cookie reject seems to have just got a lot worse. I now have to both opt-out, and then reject "legitimate interest". But that is not enough; I have to then go through all the vendors, and turn of "legitimate interest" for each vendor.

This is getting beyond a joke, and makes it almost impossible to use SE without getting tracked on other sites.

I am in a GDPR region. I was unable to reproduce this earlier, but got it on different machine. Screenshots are attached

Old vs. new cookie consent dialogs, showing more options in the new one

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  • 1
    The one on the left is what you should be seeing, and was only added in the last month. I haven't seen the one on the right before.
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Jan 25 at 10:04
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    This is what I see in an incognito session from a GDPR region: i.sstatic.net/w75h6.png and i.sstatic.net/uzcIt.png and just clicking "necessary cookies only" is all that is needed. No subsequent dialogs or confirmation are needed. It really looks like some other site is pushing those dialogs on you. Maybe your ISP. Use the developer tools of the browser to inspect where those dialogs originate from.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jan 25 at 10:53
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    As the dialog has dependency on cookielaw.org I checked their dialogs as well and those don't match your screenshots either.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jan 25 at 10:59
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    On what site, exactly, are you seeing those dialogs? In other words, on what URL?
    – Makyen
    Commented Jan 25 at 15:21
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    It was on travel.stackexchange.com. I got it at home, and at work; different ISPs. My home ISP is know for not interfering with traffic. I was using Firefox on both occassions. I couldn't reproduce in an Incognito session, nor as a different user on the same PC.
    – CSM
    Commented Jan 25 at 21:32
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    What browser extensions do you have installed, if any? Any userscripts? Which version of Firefox?
    – Makyen
    Commented Jan 25 at 22:15
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    @CSM Do you have less-cropped versions of these screenshots?
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Jan 25 at 22:42
  • I have also seen these dialogs on clean Firefox with no extensions on my work computer in the last couple of days, but not on my personal computer.
    – user1937198
    Commented Jan 26 at 0:07
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    The questionable cookie consent listed "BeeswaxIO Corporation" which I think is interesting. It's related to Comcast, if it matters. I wonder if it's from a rogue ads (either external or from SE) that somehow able to show cookie consent. // cc: @user1937198
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Jan 26 at 5:29
  • @user1937198 Are you seeing the actual popups that are shown in the question, or something that looks like what SPArcheon shows in their answer to this question. I'm asking you for clarification, because others have demonstrated confusion as to mixing up what they are seeing (which doesn't have the problem the question is complaining about) with what the question is complaining about and showing in screenshots. So far, you're the only one that's claimed they can reproduce this (and hasn't demonstrated that their claim of reproducing it is incorrect).
    – Makyen
    Commented Jan 26 at 18:05
  • Looking back at this, I can't reproduce the popups on the right... wut
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Jan 26 at 18:15
  • @Makyen I had been seeing the actual popups shown on this question. But I've also now been served the normal variant (on the left) as well. I wouldn't be surprised if it was rogue ads.
    – user1937198
    Commented Jan 26 at 19:00
  • The other possibility that came to mind is an A/B test either by stackexchange or their third party provider.
    – user1937198
    Commented Jan 26 at 19:02
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    As for the inconsistent theme... "We have made the decision not to maintain the theme customization matching, as supporting it would require quite a bit of effort/maintenance. As the cookie consent banner is by-design meant to be an intermittent experience, we decided not to invest resources in maintaining that feature."
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Jan 26 at 21:32
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    @MetaAndrewT. When quoting, it's really helpful to provide a link to the source, so people reading your comment can go read the context within which the quote was stated. In addition, that's a quote from, presumably, somewhere on SE, so requires attribution under the CC BY-SA license.
    – Makyen
    Commented Jan 27 at 16:13

2 Answers 2

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Since people continue to argue that that consent window can't be from Stack Exchange, I wanted to post this answer to provide some insight (I am not feeling at ease with replacing the question screenshots).

While I still not understand HOW the screens were made (do the pop-up render differently on some obscure browsers?) I can confirm that some screens partially match.

enter image description here

Here you have the "Measure advertising performance" section, but there is no sub section like the one in the screenshot. Weird.

Even weirder is the mention of "BeeswaxIO Corporation" in the last screen the OP posted.

Meta Andrew T. argued that:

The questionable cookie consent listed "BeeswaxIO Corporation" which I think is interesting. It's related to Comcast, if it matters. I wonder if it's from a rogue ads (either external or from SE) that somehow able to show cookie consent.

They assumed that "BeeswaxIO Corporation" can't be related to our site but wonder what? It is mentioned in the "vendors list" page.

enter image description here

So... oddly the actual info in the OP screenshots match the site, but the UI and the "granularity" of the options don't.

I am starting to wonder if the OP didn't manage to query the system right as some new configuration was applied.

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    Your screenshots don't show the issues which the question OP is complaining about. You've demonstrated why people are still arguing that it's not reproducible/unclear, and that you were unable to reproduce the issue. The issue reported hinges on the specifics of the UI indicated in the question. But, you've argued in comments on the question that the issue is real, even though you've demonstrated that you aren't able to reproduce it.
    – Makyen
    Commented Jan 26 at 18:00
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    @Makyen It does place some bounds on how elaborate the hoax has to be, though. I'm leaning towards "inexplicable configuration error", even though I can't imagine why the box in the corner would be different (that's served directly by Stack Exchange's servers). The detailed popup, I can understand being different, since it's served by a third-party and might be susceptible to a configuration problem.
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Jan 26 at 18:32
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    @wizzwizz. If I understand correctly the popup is based on a service provided by OneTrust. And again, it is my understanding looking at their site that they offer base templates you can customize. The popup the OP posted seems like it could be a "Base" template (no site branding, generic welcome message) while the one I see is clearly customized. This gave me the impression that the user could have somehow hit some timeframe when the box was different (maybe SE was doing some test??) or there is some regional issue I can't see. I remember people claims about the box being different for US/EU
    – ꓢPArcheon
    Commented Jan 26 at 19:09
  • I just inspected the element and you're right, SE uses OneTrust. This is the cookie consent dialog and its source code seen from Asia. The comments on the code show each section, but there's no code inside.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Jan 26 at 21:13
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Your issue was caused by some hiccups during the deployment of the new cookie modal that we previously announced. It has since been resolved. Thank you for reporting this bug.

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