Saturday, January 16, 2021
Government plans overhaul
Cookie banners should become clearer
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Anyone who browses the Internet a lot knows it: A banner is placed over the page, the user should choose which cookies are allowed. Annoyed, many simply click away – and often accept the maximum selection. According to the Ministry of Justice, that should now change.
The Federal Ministry of Justice is pressing for changes to the queries about cookies on the Internet. “We want to make rejecting cookie settings as easy as giving consent,” said Consumer Protection State Secretary Christian Kastrop of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”. So far the pages are often too consumer-unfriendly.
Internet site operators must ask whether and to what extent users agree to the installation of small service programs, so-called cookies. The arrangement, size and color often suggest comprehensive approval or even provoke an erroneous approval.
Kastrop spoke of manipulation in this context. Even when the query was complicated, consumers often clicked on “Accept”, annoyed, in order to shorten the process. A new law is not planned, the newspaper quoted the State Secretary as saying. Rather, the ministry is relying on the establishment of a competence center for behavioral consumer research, as the “FAS” reported. Psychologists and economists should work together in this.
Cookies store data on the user’s hard drive when surfing the Internet. When you visit the website at a later time, it will help to recognize the users and their settings. Cookies are used, for example, to present consumers with individual advertising.
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