Is this legit or a scam?

[Whoopie]

I was using Safari not chrome and clicked on legitimate website and then on a survey within that website. This pop up occurred. Yes, I use use a gmail address in Mail App, yes I use the Google search engine, but I did not expect a Google message in Safari. I repeated the same steps with the same result. I left the website.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

The survey is likely using Google Forms and that service uses cookies to ensure that folks don't respond twice and all that. If you have cookies completely disabled (do you?), then that breaks the service and it's asking you to enable cookies. If you don't want to do that, obviously don't complete the survey.

Having cookies completely disabled makes your web browsing experience quite interesting. The upside is that no site remembers you, the downside is no site remembers you.

 

[Whoopie]

Oh good, then it wasn't evil people infiltrating my Mac!
I do not have block all cookies checked in Safari settings.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

OK, so it might be something else with the cookies settings that the service didn't like and they're suggesting a set of default steps to troubleshoot.

But yeah, your Mac is fine and you can safely ignore this message.

 

[Whoopie]

Thank you.
It is not worth extensive work on my end; they should simplify if they expect cooperation. The survey would not help me, it was designed to help the website owner. If I can contact someone there I will tell them of the issue.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Having cookies completely disabled makes your web browsing experience quite interesting. The upside is that no site remembers you, the downside is no site remembers you.

This is one of those areas where using a Web browser other than Safari could be useful. Safari has all or nothing settings regarding cookies (this might have changed recently; I'm not running Ventura on any of my Macs). Other browsers give you more options, such as accepting only certain cookies, keeping certain cookies, etc.

Cookies aren't universally something to be avoided. Having options can make things much more convenient.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

This is one of those areas where using a Web browser other than Safari could be useful. Safari has all or nothing settings regarding cookies (this might have changed recently; I'm not running Ventura on any of my Macs). Other browsers give you more options, such as accepting only certain cookies, keeping certain cookies, etc.

Cookies aren't universally something to be avoided. Having options can make things much more convenient.

I use a 3rd party app named "Cookie" that manages my cookies for me, including in Safari. Great app with lots of options for which sites to keep them for and when to delete (on browser quit; periodically after x number of minutes; etc.).

 

[Whoopie]

I use a 3rd party app named "Cookie" that manages my cookies for me, including in Safari. Great app with lots of options for which sites to keep them for and when to delete (on browser quit; periodically after x number of minutes; etc.).

M1 iMac. Ventura 13.4 16GB 2021