Privacy Is Not a Cookie Banner (And We Know It)
Cookie banners are the plastic wrap of the internet—annoying and mostly useless. Real privacy is not about asking for permission to spy; it's about not spying.
The Annoyance Economy
You land on a website. It is a law firm, or perhaps a boutique consultancy. You are looking for expertise. You are looking for calm.
Instead, you are assaulted. A pop-up covers half the screen. It demands you manage your preferences. It offers you “Legitimate Interest” checkboxes that are pre-ticked. It forces you to play a game of Whac-A-Mole just to read a biography.
Is this the first impression you wish to make?
We have allowed lawyers and ad-tech vendors to vandalize our digital lobbies. We put these banners up because we are afraid of fines, but we ignore the fine we pay in reputation every single day.
A cookie banner is not a privacy strategy. It is an admission of guilt. It says, “I am about to do something to you that requires a legal disclaimer.”
The Tacky Habit: Surveillance Lite
Why do we have these trackers? Usually, it is because we installed a “free” analytics tool, or a “free” social sharing widget.
We are back to the cost of “free.”
These tools pay for themselves by siphoning your client’s behavior and selling it to the highest bidder. You are effectively letting a stranger into your conference room to take notes on your clients, just so you can get a free chart showing how many people visited your site. C’est ridicule.
It is low-class behavior. It suggests that you value third-party metrics more than first-party trust.
When you force a high-net-worth client to click “Accept All” just to view your portfolio, you are degrading the relationship. You are treating them like traffic. You are treating them like a resource to be pixelated and retargeted.
The Professional Standard: The Zero-Banner Approach
There is a more elegant way. It is called Privacy by Design.
Imagine a website with no banner. No pop-up. No “Accept” button. Just content.
How is this legal? It is legal because you are not spying.
- Switch Tools: Move from invasive analytics (which require consent) to privacy-first analytics (which do not).
- Kill the Pixel: Stop sending your client’s data to social media giants. If you want to advertise, buy ads. Do not use your clients as bait.
- The Statement: Instead of a legal wall, have a simple statement in the footer: “We do not track you. We do not use cookies. Your privacy is respected by default.”
This is the ultimate flex. It signals that your business model is robust enough that you do not need to scrape behavioral surplus to survive.
Privacy is not about managing consent for bad habits. It is about breaking the bad habits.
When you remove the surveillance, you remove the need for the theater. You clear the air. You allow the client to focus on your expertise, rather than your compliance infrastructure. That is not just good ethics; it is good taste.
FAQs
Don't we need a banner for analytics?
Not if you use privacy-preserving analytics that don't track personal data. You can measure traffic without stalking people.
But everyone else has a banner.
Everyone else wears fast fashion, too. Does that mean you should? Differentiation comes from higher standards.
How do we retarget ads without cookies?
You build a brand so strong that people come back on their own. Retargeting is often just paying to annoy people who already know you exist.