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Comment by TorKlingberg | Hacker News Reader

I think that issue is that running a Bitcoin miner on unsuspecting website visitors' computers would constitute unauthorized access. Much like a miner botnet.

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Heh, if that works, guess one could sue Google for putting their analytics on many websites. See, those bastards unauthorizedly run their software on my machine, and it even spies on me, reporting on my browsing habits! /jk

I think there could actually be a case be made that it should require the users consent. Just like the EU has recently mandated that websites have to get the consent of users to use cookies.

Yet no website provides you with an add free version first or analytic free version first before asking for your consent. The way EU law is currently implemented by websites assumes consent making the whole exercise completely redundant.

I don't find it redundant; I quite like having a direct link to the cookie policy available when I visit a website for the first time, instead of having to hunt for it. I don't always care about the site's policy on such matters, but dismissing the notices of sites that I don't care about is a minor annoyance at best.

I think with the right pressure from Civil Rights groups they might actually be willing to strengthen those laws further, especially since most of the corporations affected are from the US. Things like mandating that Data stored about you has to be deletable and stored in Europe.

Except it's slamming the barn door about a decade after the horse bolted.

The EU cookie case is indeed an excellent parallel - cookies are so thoroughly entrenched into the business models of the web that all that's been accomplished is the more compliant websites throw up a big annoying banner you must dismiss. If you try to hamstring javascript the same way, the shady websites that actually run the stuff you want to worry about will take no notice. And the nice websites will explode with infinite regress trying to figure out how to obtain consent to run their cookie banner javascript...

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