Nobody likes cookies. They were born as a way to personalize our experience on the internet and have ended up being a tool that collect data indiscriminately. That is why he persecutes them more and more. The bad thing is that they arise worse alternativesWhat TrustPid, known colloquially as a supercookie. Developed by Vodafone, in Spain, Telefónica (Movistar) and Orange have activated it for their customers. How does it affect you? Can TrustPid, the super cookie, be disabled?
As we learned a few days ago, TrustPid is a token which acts as a supercookie. Its job is to track users when they browse the Internet. This is how they collect information that can be used with advertising purposes. And unlike traditional cookies, no one has asked us for permission to activate them. What’s more, TrustPid’s raison d’être is to bypass tracker blockers, Apple’s restrictions on your devices to protect our privacy and, furthermore, take care of future laws that will prevent or make it difficult for third party cookies.
so if you are Telefónica (Movistar or O2) or Orange customer in Spain, you will have TrustPid activated. It is also activated in France (Orange and SFR) and Germany (Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom). On all your devices connected to the networks of these providers. In principle, it is in testing phase. But the goal in the short and medium term is for it to be fully operational and track our browsing to show personalized advertising. If it looks good to you, nothing happens. But if not, can we get rid of this supercookie?
TrustPid is justified on its official page as a solution so that the internet remains free. Well, it refers to the pages you visit, since internet access is still paid. In his promotional text, he says that “TrustPid is a technological solution that allows consumers to enjoy free content and the advantages of an open Internet, while maintaining control over privacy.”
But in this article we are not going to enter into that debate. We are going to focus on that we can disable the TrustPid supercookie. That is, you can decide whether you want to be tracked or not. In the Homepage of this supercookie we find a section called Management of your consent. It says that to manage your consent you need to use your mobile internet connection. Come on, you’ll have to connect from a smartphone via mobile data instead of using Wi-Fi.
The process to disable TrustPid, the super cookie, is simple. We click on the button check mein English Verify Me. After a few seconds showing the message “Accessing…”, a new message will appear indicating the details of the cancellation next to the button stop-service either stop the service. In principle it is already. According to the message that we will see on the screen, “this option stops TrustPid for all advertisers or publishers”. But then it says “this option is valid up to 90 days of inactivity”.
The question is: after 90 days, 3 months, TrustPid will be activated again? It also tells us that stopping the service is independent of the consent we must give in the Consent Management Platform. Platform to which, for the moment, I have not been able to access. Interestingly, this message appears in the English text but not in its Spanish version.
That’s all for now. Disabling the TrustPid super cookie is possible. but we will have to see how will we be notified to affected customers that we have the supercookie activated. We will also have to wait if, in addition to Orange and Telefónica (Movistar, O2), they join more providers from the internet to TrustPid, something that is already happening in Germany and France. And finally, can we customize behavior of the supercookie from some type of configuration menu or will we simply have the option to accept or deny this “service”?