Is Privacy Badger likely to (on popular sites) block all cookies that you consent to via a cookie banner?

[vtjeng]

Many sites around the web have a cookie banner where you can "accept all cookies" in a single click, while declining all but the necessary cookies requires multiple clicks. For example, in Stack Exchange's old banner, from this post:

If I'm using Privacy Badger, can I typically safely click on "accept all cookies" while having cookies blocked? (This is particularly relevant on mobile, where it takes a bit of fumbling before I can decline all but necessary cookies). I understand that this might not work well on less popular websites (per the FAQ)), but I'm wondering whether Privacy Badger would block "functional cookies" and "performance cookies" in addition to "targeting cookies" on popular sites.

[ghostwords]

Hello and thanks for asking!

I do think it is likely that Privacy Badger already knows to block (or at least block cookies of) most domains controlled by cookie consent banners on popular sites. However:

• It might help to think of cookie consent banners as limited and hard-to-use privacy tools. There are a bunch of them out there in existence, and any given site might have one of them "installed". It is possible that selecting the "required cookies only" setting will prevent the loading of domain(s) that Privacy Badger does not block at this time. This is similar to the Is Privacy Badger compatible with other extensions, including adblockers? FAQ entry.

• If the consent banner is requesting permission to track you via a mechanism Privacy Badger does not yet detect, you would then be opting into certain tracking. For example, see Inform about capabilities against "TrustPID" #2873 (comment).

• Declining cookies sends a certain signal to the ecosystem, while accepting sends a different signal. It may be personally worth it to send the right signal, whether via extra manual labor or by installing an extension to do it for you.

My takeaway? I think it's fine either way; what are you comfortable with? You are already ahead of the pack by using a privacy tool.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[vtjeng]

Thanks for the thorough answer! Much appreciated. For future users with similar questions:

• I ended up using uBlock Origin to hide the cookie notices see LifeHacker AU. Note that hiding notices is not a fool-proof approach: for example, if you're in California, websites don’t require users to opt-in before dropping cookies (source)
• I considered using the Never-Consent extension linked by @ghostwords, but have not had the time to do my own research into the criticism of Ghostery as an organization. (I'd be far more comfortable if the extension was created by an organization like the EFF!)