With various legal directives in place throughout the world, website owners are “off the hook” by providing a cookie disclaimer and the possibility for the visitor to “opt out”. Some websites have a rather odd approach where they refer you to a page with a vast amount of information abou their “data partners” and invite you to “opt out” on their partners’ page(s). It goes without saying that many people don’t bother because it’s just too much work (which is exactly the purpose).
But when your website designer relies on “web fonts” and/or resources from a content distribution network (CDN) like Javascript libraries, you are also, indirectly leaking some visitor data to the companies hosting such resources. Granted, you’re not “leaking as much data”, but with analytical AI and the huge amounts of data many of these “analytical companies” already have on your visitors, you’re simply providing one more piece of the puzzle to them. Free of charge.
The cost of free is perhaps hard to measure for you and me, but Google and others know exactly how much the data about your visitors is worth.
Ain’t that something.
New Cookie Disclaimer-proposal:
“By continuing to our site, you are agreeing to the collection of data about yourself beyond your wildest imagination and possible comprehension. We could explain it, but you wouldn’t get it anyway. [OK]”
PS. Hosting external libraries and web fonts on CDN is not always such a grand idea when it comes to website performance. For each and every different such external “site address”, a new session handshake (SSL/TLS/etc) between the visitor’s web browser and the CDN is required.