"Today, Noyb filed 226 complaints with 18 authorities against websites that use popular cookie banner software 'OneTrust' with misleading settings," the organization said in a statement.
“Being online has become a frustrating experience” in Europe, with “annoying barriers designed to make it extremely difficult to reject cookies everywhere on the net”, added the NGO.
It demands that the “yes/no” option to cookies – computer tracers which allow targeted advertising – be clearly offered to Internet users, as provided for by a European regulation which entered into force in 2018.
By August 2021, Noyb had already filed more than 400 complaints and decisions have yet to be made, although "many sites have adapted their settings by adding dismiss buttons" since then, she said.
"After a year, we come to hopeless cases which do not react to any request", lamented Max Schrems, the director of the NGO.
"They must now be studied by the competent authorities".
Statistics published in 2021 show that 3% of users accept cookies, but that more than 90% of them are pushed to do so because they cannot easily reject them.
© 2022 AFP