The “Accept all” button is often the standard for cookie banners. An administrative court has ruled that the opposite offer is also necessary.
Lower Saxony’s data protection officer Denis Lehmkemper can report a legal victory in his long-standing battle against manipulatively designed cookie banners. The Hanover Administrative Court has confirmed his legal opinion in a judgment of March 19 that has only just been made public: Accordingly, website operators must offer a clearly visible “reject all” button on the first level of the corresponding banner for cookie consent requests if there is also the frequently found “accept all” option. Accordingly, cookie banners must not be specifically designed to encourage users to click on consent and must not prevent them from rejecting the controversial browser files.
How is this a problem with the legislation? Do you honestly think your privacy was respected before the law demanded that websites tell you about how they violate your privacy?
Web browsers DO have this as a universal setting, Do Not Track, but websites choose to ignore it beacuse it doesn’t benefit them to respect your right to privacy and treat you with the respect due to a functioning adult.
The legislation was a massive win for everyone except the predatory manipulators.
That’s exactly my point.
The legislation, from the start, should have upheld the do not track and similar settings in browsers. Require websites to check and honour those flags.
Instead, we get some half-arsed requirement to add cookie banners to every website under some vague threat of prosecution (which never seems to happen unless you’re a social media giant) that inconveniences every single user, and often more than once.
This here, now, is a tiny bandage on a gaping wound caused by not doing what was required in the first place.