Vivaldi is updating desktop and Android versions of its browser to block annoying cookie preference pop-ups

Vivaldi reported today that it’s updating the desktop and Android versions of its Vivaldi browser with the ability to block annoying cookie preference pop-ups. On account of the passage of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you’ve probably had to click through at least one dialog box inquiring as to whether you’d prefer to oversee how a site tracks you. Vivaldi’s new update allows you to keep away from those notifications — for certain significant caveats — while theoretically as yet holding you safe from tracking.

Vivaldi’s logic for the new feature, tenderly called “Cookie Crumbler,” is that while giving clients control over how they’re tracked is good, doing as such through a pop-up “leads to clicking ‘allow’ or ‘accept’ without realizing that unwittingly users just gave permission for trackers to create behavioral profiles about them,” Vivaldi composes.

Vivaldi’s inherent Ad Blocker can hypothetically as of now handle hiding clients from the different tracking methods sent by locales, so Cookie Crumbler is tied in with removing the annoying hangers-on — the pop-up notifications that immediate clients to modify how they’re tracked, if by any means. Clients with a updated version of Vivaldi (version 3.8 as of today) can enable Cookie Crumbler by going to Settings > Privacy > Tracker and ad blocking > Manage sources > Remove cookie warnings lists. A similar feature can be empowered on the Android version of Vivaldi under similar menus.

Treat Crumbler pulls from two separate third-party block lists to work, but “this is not a perfect solution, as there will be a few websites that use other tactics to obtain cookie consent,” Vivaldi says. Empowering Cookie Crumbler may likewise make a few sites totally inaccessible on desktop and mobile, in the event that the site locks some functionality behind interacting with the cookie dialog. Losing access to certain websites is a significant inconvenience for an web browser that is designed to visit sites, and that might be the reason Cookie Crumbler isn’t enabled by default.

Vivaldi is additionally taking a much more stronger stance on Google’s cookie alternative, FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts. FLoC constructs cohorts from clients’ browsing history to sort them semi-anonymously by interests or qualities for websites hoping to sell ads. It appears to be less straightforwardly invasive than a traditional cookie, yet in also hugely dependent on browser makers implementing it effectively for it to be protected.

Vivaldi is positively not OK with Google’s implementation of FLoC and isn’t enabling it in its browser, despite relying on Google’s Chromium codebase. With the present updated version of Vivaldi, it’s additionally blacklisting the FLoC component needed for Google’s present test of the ad technology, removing it from browsers that may as of now have it downloaded and keeping it from being downloaded going ahead.

Vivaldi 3.8 likewise adds new customization options for the browser’s Panels feature (think SlideOver in iPadOS however for websites) and a new keyboard command for adding bookmarks bookmarks. The Android version of the application can likewise now switch between the 41 languages Vivaldi supports rather than relying on Android’s built-in language settings.