Have a Mac mini using 10.13.6. On at least half the websites I visit I get a popup asking me to allow cookies. I have allow cookies set in Safari Preferences.

Any ideas why websites are not recognizing that I have 'allow cookies'? Maybe a corrupted .plist or something?

Thanks in advance.

I'm getting those obnoxious pop-ups, some of them discretely small...some ridiculously large, at many websites.

I don't think it has anything to do with my personal prefs, which are the same as yours.

Does anyone know what has spawned them?

Depends on the site but among the reasons...

1. Money — one way or another the site and/or host is getting paid to install tracking cookies and collect data
2. Money — the site is using cookies to see what products you are looking at so it can "suggest" similar items you might be interested in buying. Ie. the on-line version of impulse marketing.
3. Money — cookies are required to support the site's shopping cart
4. Money — for many content providers it is the only way they can afford to keep the site open and up to date. (See item 1)
5. Money — advertisers want to be sure their expensive copy is being seen and not blocked.

Are you seeing the common thread?

Your cookie settings are recognized just fine, but ‘supplemented’ by a mandatory notification from web sites you visit. This behavior is the direct result of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as detailed HERE and HERE. Removing or withholding the cookie notification (regardless of local settings to allow cookies) for users within the EU violates the GDPR, and because most organizations do not maintain area specific web sites, they aim for maximum compliance everywhere.

Thanks for the explanation.

I've seen notifications as big as this thoroughly obnoxious one, and others (none of which, of course, I can locate at the moment) in the range of 5% that size. Have you got any idea what accounts for the difference?

In a word: no. I can make a few guesses though. For instance, web sites that support providing optimal info to their visitors might opt for more obvious/larger notifications, while those that don’t might want to stick to the lower size limits of the requirement. Alternatively, it could be ‘just’ a web designer’s choice, or simply a software default. Of course, there may be other reasons too.

Apart from this, it’s good to know that the GDPR notification requirement is separate from the actual setting of cookies, regardless of what’s suggested about that in the notification. You can readily see that by having Safari’s Privacy/Manage Website data pref tab open (or the equivalent function in other browsers, if available): from what I’ve observed, cookies get set independently from the user’s response to the notification. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with or just dismiss the notification, your cookie is often set before that choice is even made.

That's what I"ve seen too.

I finally found the other notification I was looking for, and here, are the two extremes. 5%? More like 2%, and the smaller one does NOT ask users to agree as does the larger one.

Maybe I haven't paid close enough attention, but I've always thought the EU was more precise about things like this, i.e. I find the extremely wide latitude between the two curious.