Opinions differ on cookie banners.
For some, they are an essential, but not yet perfect step towards a more conscious handling of data on the Internet.
For many others, they simply make web browsing more annoying.
Internet users can no longer easily ignore them.
Alexander Wulfers
Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.
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It is all the more annoying for users that the banners asking for their consent to set cookies often do not even fulfill the purpose of transparency for which they were intended.
The German consumer advice centers found in 2021 that "almost ten percent of the banners were clearly inadmissible".
The law actually provides that accepting and rejecting cookies should be equally easy.
However, data protectionists criticize that the user is often tempted to accept the cookies, for example by the color of the button or a more prominent placement.
A few years ago, the specialist magazine "Wired" therefore called the cookie banner the "biggest failure of the General Data Protection Regulation".
However, the cookie banner requirement also poses a problem for website operators themselves.
They must ensure that they have legally informed users about the use of their data.
Otherwise warnings are threatened.
It's not that easy, says Rebekka Weiß from the Bitkom industry association.
So none of those involved are really satisfied with the status quo, at most perhaps the law firms.
Last year, a group of consumer advocates, data protection experts and company representatives came together to form a "good practice initiative".
Together they want to make cookie banners better.
On Thursday they will present the result in a virtual conference.
The host is the Ministry of Consumer Protection, which funded the initiative.
So far, not many companies have signed
"Consent banners are often complicated and misleading, sometimes even designed in a manipulative way," State Secretary Christiane Rohleder explains her support for the initiative.
The banners often led to "veritable click marathons" to find the desired settings.
"With fair and clear consent queries, on the other hand, companies can send a strong signal for consumer friendliness, which has an effect with the first click on the website." The initiative should therefore "create a practical tool for consumer-friendly consent banners with design guidelines".
Whether the new guidelines can save the reputation of banners also depends on how many website operators can end up getting used to them.
The number of companies they have signed so far is manageable.
One of them is the mobile communications and Internet provider Telefonica, whose interests as a network operator are of course different from those of the website operators.
The Bitkom association itself will not sign the document despite being involved in drafting it because it cannot speak for all of its employees.
Bitkom representative Weiss hopes that other companies will soon join them.
Although the guidelines could not create legal certainty, they would at least provide orientation, especially for smaller companies that have never dealt with the topic before.
Cookies soon banned anyway?
Cookies have been a fundamental building block of the World Wide Web for decades.
The small files are stored on the user's computer and enable them to be recognized on repeated visits.
Data protectionists are particularly bothered by so-called third-party cookies that track users across different websites.
The obligation to set cookie banners arose as a result of the General Data Protection Regulation.
Even the new guidelines will not bring about the end of the banners.
In the medium term, however, the cookies themselves are being attacked from a different direction.
One by one, the big tech companies are ditching technology.
Apple (Safari) and Mozilla (Firefox) browsers already automatically block third-party cookies.
The market leader, Google's Chrome browser, is set to follow later this year.
In a network without cookies, sooner or later the banners could also become obsolete.