A cookie Paywall Could Make Surfing the Web Very Expensive

European countries have been dubbed a "cookie paywall," and it could make surfing the web expensive

T-Online, Bild, Die Welt, and a variety of other news sites offer the same choice. Want private browsing? Cough up or kick rocks. The new privacy headache cropping up in some central European countries has been dubbed a "cookie paywall," and it could make surfing the web very expensive.

You've probably seen websites that make you accept or reject cookies before you view any content. A cookie paywall throws up a more significant roadblock, forcing you to pay to avoid tracking. The feature is one way online businesses are trying to navigate European privacy rules and remain profitable. Incognito Mode can't get you out of this one. With a U.S. federal privacy law on the horizon, onerous cookie paywalls could be a vision of the future for the American internet, too, if regulators aren't careful.

Refusing cookies can affect your pocket

There are many websites, and more and more, that force us to accept or reject a series of cookies as soon as we enter them. They even force us to accept some «necessary cookies» at least and, if not, we will not have the option of being able to see the video, news, or what, at that moment, we wanted to see.

According to Ruetir, this will be another level, since it could be very expensive the simple fact of surfing the net and canceling that they can obtain this data from our users. In addition to that, the incognito mode will not be able to save you this time. Even, though it is more or less known, what it will cost us to continue maintaining our privacy, specifically, around 75 euros per year for not accepting cookies.

Although this new method has not yet spread, the truth is that the future for users does not look very encouraging. More than anything, because, even though few websites have opted for this method, they have registered up to 13 popular news portals in Austria and Germany that have chosen this alternative.