this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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The "Accept all" button is often the standard for cookie banners. An administrative court has ruled that the opposite offer is also necessary.

Lower Saxony's data protection officer Denis Lehmkemper can report a legal victory in his long-standing battle against manipulatively designed cookie banners. The Hanover Administrative Court has confirmed his legal opinion in a judgment of March 19 that has only just been made public: Accordingly, website operators must offer a clearly visible "reject all" button on the first level of the corresponding banner for cookie consent requests if there is also the frequently found "accept all" option. Accordingly, cookie banners must not be specifically designed to encourage users to click on consent and must not prevent them from rejecting the controversial browser files.

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[–] arakhis_@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

meanwhile meta stealing terrabytes of copyrighted literature to train their AI on, meanwhile "step in the right direction" video game megacorporations yoinking your product license you bought because its not profitible, meanwhile nintendo shutting down emulators without any base other than having money over passionated indie emulation devs, meanwhile google using google fonts on desktop on literally every website or apps on your phone to bypass this sht anyway.

way too little way too late, these people see these cute upcoming fines as very profitable and non harmful business expenses.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 177 points 1 week ago (5 children)

We and our 908 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device.

Absolutely, we need a Reject All button!

[–] Jajcus@sh.itjust.works 61 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

And it should include this mysterious 'legitimate interest', or whatever it is called - always on by default in 'my choices', even though no one seems to be able to explain what this means. How can I make an informed consent on something that vague?

On the other hand, not 'Reject All', but 'Reject All except functionally necessary' (which should be precisely regulated by the law), otherwise there will be no cookie to remember our 'reject all' choice, which I am sure the corpos would happily use do discourage us from clicking that.

[–] sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That shit makes me so mad. What the fuck is legitimate interest if not the cookies which are set anyway to make the site function It’s just purposefully misleading.

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

I'm sure "functionally necessary" already means we share your data with everyone because we setup a system where the local page state is managed by third parties that we are selling your data to.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Rejecting cookies without asking every time requires a cookie and that is clearly legitimate interest. The problem with legitimate interest is that it's not well defined enough and then you have companies claiming that Adsense personalization is an absolute necessity for their website.

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[–] lime@feddit.nu 10 points 1 week ago

the "functionally necessary" cookies, which are served by the site itself (e.g. not a third party), do not require a banner at all. if you have no third party cookies, you can do entirely without it.

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[–] Anonymaus@feddit.org 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have also seen on some websites that you have to pay them through subscription if you want to reject all cookies

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pretty sure that's illegal AF. Report them?

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[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 7 points 1 week ago

Literally saw one with 1300+ the other day, thought I was going insane 😳

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 75 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Can we ban the "Pay to have privacy" option as well.

Fuck every site that tries to pull that shit.

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's not banned. Meta isn't allowed to use that option, because it has monopoly power. IE in the view of the court, you can't avoid using Meta. For any ordinary site, there is always the option to refuse either and leave.

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[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 61 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The irony made me exhale a burst of air from my nose before closing the page, never to return.

Basically every cookie acceptance agreement popup is just a 404 to me. No webpage has important enough information anymore for me to sign any kind of agreement. It's absurd. If you passed by a shop and wanted to go in and purchase something, but a clerk stopped you at the door and made you sign a fucking agreement that store would die in a month.

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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 55 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Heise Group, you greedy cocks.

Here's a version of that article that doesn't deliberately ~~break~~ skirt as far as legally possible EU privacy law: https://archive.ph/ZTt3K

[–] Hubi@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Heise is not breaking EU law with this. The law states that there must be an option to reject all cookies, whether it's a paid option or not is up to the site.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

~~This is no longer true thanks to a ruling by the European Data Protection Board.~~ Hang on, I was misreading. I believe there's been a recent ruling, but this one ain't it.


EDIT: See pages 39 and 40. ~~Here, it seems as though no "equivalent alternative" is provided under these criteria. It seems to me like consent-or-pay is heading toward an eventual ban, but Heise makes it clear on their website you can consent, pay, or leave – i.e. not an "equivalent alternative" to my mind.~~


EDIT 2: Okay, upon reading these criteria further, it seems like this isn't a violation of EU law but that it's reaaaally close and that the EDPB really hates consent-or-pay as a loophole and wants it to die as soon as possible. If not breaking the law, it's still an ethical nightmare, so the first line of my comment stands: "Heise Group, you greedy cocks."

[–] Hubi@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago

so the first line of my comment stands: β€œHeise Group, you greedy cocks.”

Fair enough :D

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 52 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The kind of stupid shit societies have to invest money in. Don't get me wrong, it's good news, it's just baffling that money had to be invested in order to get these bastards to do the civil thing.

[–] sudo@lemmy.today 20 points 1 week ago

'its baffling in a capitalist society, corporations do everything they can to squeeze the most money out of their users with zero regard for the users wants or needs, and do whatever they can to skirt legal obligations that protect consumer privacy and security'

Yeah. I'm baffled.

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck you pieces of shit.

Go track this:

[–] abbadon420@lemm.ee 9 points 1 week ago

I usually just do this:

close window button

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A disgusting behavior that I've seen in Spain is for websites to direct you to their subscription page if you say you don't want to be tracked, either you pay for the content or you don't get any content. Apparently the Spanish courts have deemed this legal.

[–] rinze@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago

If you use uBlock Origin, add the following rule:

* privacy-center.org * block

This kills 99 % of the "accept or pay" modals, an you can still access the page normally.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Also, require its html tag to have an attribute "data-legal-reject" or something like that so we can have browsers auto reject all that shit - while keeping necessary ones.

Better yet, attach this at the protocol level. "X-Cookie-Policy: ImportantOnly" or something like that.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Yeah, there’s no reason why this should be anywhere except the browser level.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Make it opt-in where you must purposely click somewhere. And just hide that away where they have their unsubscribe button.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

afaik the wording of the gdpr says that rejection must be as easy as acceptance

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Not just "as easy" but "at least as easy". The assumption should be that the user does not consent. And there have also been a few cases where the courts have - quite rightly - rules that "pay for privacy" offers aren't good enough.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 18 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Cookie banners need to piss off forever. You may set some functional cookies only if I log in.

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FINALLY! I was wondering how long it'd take for people to act upon the fact that Permission prompts have become THE biggest digital grift. The answer: way too fucking long!

[–] OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I recently started to use "I still don't care about cookies". So far so good.

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.org 13 points 1 week ago

The issue about that extension is this:

When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do).

It will often just accept the cookies as is.

[–] ewo@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 week ago

This and Consent-o-matic

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)

You wonder, why do they not just make it illegal to use cookies at all (other than for legitimate purposes like loggin in).

Who actually wants to accept?

[–] DacoTaco@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As much as i would love to see that, youll be burning down a multi-billion, if not trillion, worth market.
Also, idk if i want the alternative of cookie tracking to be used as much as cookie tracking. Scary stuff

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (14 children)

youll be burning down a multi-billion, if not trillion, worth market.

Oh no

Also, idk if i want the alternative of cookie tracking to be used as much as cookie tracking. Scary stuff

Here's an idea, you outlaw that also

We have been in the wild west of the internet the last 20 years or so, and you wonder when we're finally going to actively police it

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[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

A friend of a friends relative's 2nd cousin mentioned that pornography sites have been surprisingly compliant about this, already.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As usual, this should have been the responsibility of browsers, not individual websites.

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