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Google logo: It will soon be easier to refuse the setting of cookies
Photo: Andrew Kelly / REUTERS
The Internet company Google apparently wants to equip its cookie banners with a new function with which the collection of personal data by cookies can be contradicted with one click.
“Google has informed us that they now want to establish this “reject everything” button bit by bit in the European Union, Switzerland and Great Britain,” said Hamburg’s top data protection officer Thomas Fuchs on Wednesday when presenting his authority’s activity report for 2021.
According to Fuchs, it will probably start in France, where a fine was imposed on Google and Facebook in December last year.
After that, however, Germany will follow relatively soon.
The good news is that there is now "a written commitment" from Google to program this button promptly and then make it available as a standard, stressed Fuchs, who had requested the function.
According to the data protection officer, many people are extremely annoyed by cookie banners and simply click them away by agreeing to them.
If users intend to reject the requests, this is often quite time-consuming.
»It is therefore of great importance that everyone who surfs the Internet must also have the option of being able to refuse the use of their data, especially for advertising purposes, right at the first level (...).«
Fuchs announced that he would now also be approaching Facebook.
He is responsible for both groups because their German headquarters are in Hamburg.
The consumer advice center NRW is suing Google
Cookie banners of the type used by Google have long been controversial.
On Wednesday, the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center announced that it would take legal action against Google's banner and would sue the company at the Berlin Regional Court.
"Companies use tricks in the design of cookie banners to try to get consumers' consent in order to obtain as much personal information as possible, collect it and process it," said Wolfgang Schuldzinski, the board member of the consumer advice center.
It must be just as easy to reject cookies as to accept them, in order to prevent thoughtless data disclosure.
This is not the case with the websites of the Google search engine.
In the context of the lawsuit, a Google spokeswoman announced that the group would “soon be making changes to our consent banner and cookie practices across Europe, including Germany, to comply with the instructions of the supervisory authorities”.
Cookies are used to identify Internet users and to show them targeted advertising in their browser.
They are stored on the consumer's online devices and contain information such as location and websites visited, but must be approved by the user.
A cookie banner manages user consent.
As a rule, this is requested via a pop-up window when you visit a website for the first time.
The North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center considers the previous banner on the Google search engine websites to be inadmissible.
Only one click is required for approval, she criticizes.
In order to refuse, however, the user must first switch to a second level of the banner.
There the user would then have to reject at least three different categories of cookies individually.
mboe/dpa/Reuters