Consent: Consumer advocates criticize cookie regulation as an excuse

The Federal Association of Consumer Organisations (vzbv) has little to say about the regulation on the management of consent for cookies approved by the federal government on Wednesday. The executive wants to establish services with which consumers can consent or reject the collection of personal information on the Internet in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The aim is to reduce the flood of cookie banners. But the vzbv does not believe that the initiative in its current form can have any “positive effect”.

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What consumer advocates see as particularly problematic is that providers of digital services do not have to accept users’ decisions made via consent management services, also known as personal information management systems (PIMS). If users do not give their consent to set cookies, online services can ask for consent as many times as they want. Only one opt-in should be permanently valid and a reminder should only be possible after one year at the earliest. According to vzbv, users are pressured to say yes. This is unacceptable and contradicts the requirements of the GDPR. In addition, this approach removes the incentive for consumers to use consent management services.

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The union recognizes According to his statement But there is hardly any incentive for companies to integrate PIMS. He generally complains about the inevitable, complex and ubiquitous data collection in the field of online advertising. The scope of consent is therefore “usually completely vague, not only with regard to the complex infrastructure and data processing bodies involved, but also with regard to the vast and cross-contextual scope of user profiles”. It is therefore fundamentally questionable whether such consent “was given in an informed manner and met the requirements of the GDPR”.

The main problem is the provision of targeted advertising

According to the VJBV, annoying cookie banners lead consumers to “sign up for consent management services under pressure” and then give their consent to avoid further abnēk arias. In these cases, the association says, there should be even more doubts about the voluntary nature of consent. Providers of digital services cannot rely on the legal certainty of an opt-in. Without a “fundamental adjustment of the underlying ecosystem at the regulatory and technical level”, expectations of success of PIMS will be so illusory.

Browser manufacturers must in particular ensure that the signals stored by the digital service provider are not suppressed, delayed, decrypted or altered in any other way, the VZBV further explains. In practice, this would mean that users who click “Accept” in the consent banner out of annoyance can no longer rely on being protected from tracking and profiling for advertising purposes by the privacy-friendly settings built into their browser. Browsers would have to store cookies – contrary to the wishes of users. This would particularly harm browser providers who protect their users with “do not track” defaults and reduce their competitive edge.

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Consumer advocates demand that providers of digital services should abide by users’ decisions. Repeated questioning should be prohibited. The requirements must also apply to all digital service providers that integrate consent management services. Users must also be able to freely choose between different consent management services.

On the other hand, the Federal Association of the Digital Economy (BvdW) welcomed the project in principle, as it takes into account freedom of economic activity and freedom of entrepreneurial choice. “However, there are still legal uncertainties,” BvdW vice president Moritz Holzgrefe told Online. “This concerns, among other things, technical feasibility, for example signal processing as well as the handling of numerous consent and related conflicts.” The responsibilities between all those involved and the related liability issues are also not clear. In addition, with this step the government is “taking a special national route”.

(MKI)