Im sure this will be obvious to most people who are au fait with computors , but it isnt to me ---- Since sites have started seeking you to agree to god knows what before you can open their site , Ive been referring to the usual option of 'further details' , and aim to NOT agree to giving permission for anything I dont have to ,apart from whats necessary for the site to function for me . Sounds easy , as you usually just have a box to click , but Ive seen plenty of sites where they deliberately try to mislead you into accepting something by the clicking of an apparently NO choice actually being a YES one , Im just not sure what my click means This eg below is a common version , now which option do I choose which means I only want to agree to the essentials and no other rubbish, because I have no idea what preference is being referred to by the 'on' and 'off' ?

If you don't give any personal details to a site it doesn't really matter as they can only track against your IP not "you" as a person, yes they might build up a profile and might be able to guess its the same person on another occasion but as long as it doesn't trace back to a real person, so what?.

I believe some sites just block you if you don't allow them to have the required preferences, that's fine, its the site owners choice, there is no compulsion to provide you with a site.

The options they provide is a get-around as the law say everything has to be opt-in not opt-out so as long as the main over-riding button is opt-in, the options can be opt-in or opt-out, to my mind that is not the spirit of the law.

The law is a complete mess created by people that haven't got a clue and has made mobile phone use even more complicated and unpredictable.

It would have been much better if they had allowed for browsers to declare your pre-chosen preferences with the ability to customise them for individual sites, much the same was as the inbuilt password/login managers work.

On some of my sites I have now totally removed login capability, its the easiest choice but the penalty is that the users get considerably less functionality. Its far easier than risking getting prosecuted for some weird interpretation of the law. It is all based around "personal data" which is a term that has never been defined - how can you legislate against unknown parameters?

Eg, if I register on a site as "Dogs Breath 7678657657658", would that be personal data? On one hand it probably uniquely relates to me so could be used to identify me (or narrows down to a very small number of people, which the law also specifies). On the other hand, it would be almost always impossible for any site owner to trace it back to me, especially if I used a VPN.

They have agreed that encrypted backups are not counted as holding personal data provided that the server where they are held cannot immediately decrypt them. This is a joke as it would be exceedingly easy to extract the personal data should the owner want.

Any data you "publish" is not counted as personal data, eg if you give your address to the public electoral register (which is published) or a telephone directory or a website public post, your name and address is no longer personal data.

All does sound a nightmare. Not sure I understand all the technical stuff - be patient with me,-Im better at knife throwing than I am at this stuff , but when you say at the beginning it doesnt matter as long as youre not giving personal info - what Im trying to avoid, is having my laptop detail tracked and passed to their 'associates' who then will likely bombard me with advertising posts . Ive noticed that if I look up and read -lets say an article about a deaf person , within a very short time , I start getting posts about hearing aids within half an hour even sometimes. The preference chart I posted was from a site with an article about property price ups and downs in various areas . I havent opened it yet , I stopped to do the preference chart, but the minute I do , I expect articles about housing stuff to appear in my feed.Thought that might not be the case if I can turn off the relevant permission button? My instinct is to be NOT clicking the option at the top to 'enable everything' -- so are you saying in reality they will do what they want and the result will be the same whether lowere down I click 'on' or whether I click 'off'? If thats what you mean, then I wont bother doing anything. - If there will be a difference, - the on/off box is I think set at 'on' with the choice of changing to 'off' . Which one means 'I dont give you permission to share me to your associates" ? If youve already given me the answer , then its gone over my head and I need it spelled out even more simply please -- like Leave it alone , agree to enable everything , or click the off button to change it to on . Thanks.

If you don't give your real name, address, bank details, telephone number etc then you are just another person and could be anybody (or even a bot).

The tracking usually doesn't alter the quantity of advertising you get, it just personalises it if it knows something about you, eg it will give you Wirral adverts rather than Sydney. In any case they can narrow down your rough location by IP address so you normally get more relevant location adverts. I guess a better example would be sussing out if you are male or female by previous previous entries so might give you adverts for bras rather than y-fronts.

I just click the easiest button and enjoy the bra adverts

Tsst! shocking DD ! How could you lol! Thank you for the help. Think I might start showing an interest in quality furniture now .