Yo peeps, I’m currently looking into TCF Vendors, Ad partners and their whole corporate greed hellhole of tracking. I am writing a paper on this, and would like for everything to be factually correct. However, I am struggling to understand one particular part of this “transparency framework” and hope someone can help me clarify on cookie-duration.
As seen in the first thumbnail, the cookie duration is listed as 180 days. However, upon selecting > Storage Details, each cookie is displayed in further detail. In this detailed section, there are additional cookies with duration as high as 1825 days, not 180… So which is it? Currently, I’m (obviously) assuming the worst, as in, it being 1825 and not 180 days. There are additional cookies on this list, see spoiler below, that have cookies with the duration of 180 days. Why are the cookies with the highest duration listed on the first page? And if the answer is that “it would look worse”, then they also have cookies with lower amount of days than 180 that could have been used. There are multiple cookies with different durations, do all of them count?
If needed here is a spolier that includes all the cookies in detail from the Exactag GmbH vendor.
SPOILER
Exactag GmbH - Storage details
Name: exactag_new_adoptout
Type: Cookie
Duration: 1825 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Refreshes Cookies: No
Name: exactag_new_ccoptout
Type: Cookie
Duration: 1825 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Refreshes Cookies: No
Name: exactag_new_optout
Type: Cookie
Duration: 1825 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Refreshes Cookies: No
Name: exactag_new_cpv
Type: Cookie
Duration: 1 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Measure advertising performance
Measure content performance
Refreshes Cookies: No
Name: exactag_new_gk
Type: Cookie
Duration: 60 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Measure advertising performance
Measure content performance
Refreshes Cookies: No
Name: exactag_new_uk
Type: Cookie
Duration: 180 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Measure advertising performance
Measure content performance
Refreshes Cookies: Yes
Name: exactag_new_user
Type: Cookie
Duration: 180 (days)
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Measure advertising performance
Measure content performance
Refreshes Cookies: Yes
Name: session_session
Type: Cookie
Duration: Uses session cookies
Domain:
Purposes:
Store and/or access information on a device
Measure advertising performance
Measure content performance
Refreshes Cookies: No
Let me know if any additional information is needed.
As a guess I would say that means they don’t set cookies themselves, they do use cookies that are set by different services.
Which would be a nice way for them to not have legal responsibility.
But if not themselves then who? There are no additional parties/companies/vendors listed within these cookies as far as I can see at least, and im pretty sure they do need to be listed? Also these companies are the tracking companies, so it would be weird if it wasnt them. As far as I understand it atleast.
I can’t visit them directly (they are on 5 different DNS block lists). Looking at Internet Archive I would say it’s cookies set by Google, probably through Firebase Analytics, maybe AdMob.
I assume that when you say “them”, you tried to visit the hompage of Pixalate? But it sounds about right actually, the app I am investigating have the following trackers implemented;