In March, the data protection association Noyb wrote to 270 website operators about “misleading” consent banners. At 80 percent, the second step follows.
The Austrian organization Noyb filed complaints against the operators of 226 websites with 18 European data protection supervisory authorities on Tuesday. The activists accuse the providers of using software to manage cookie banners from the provider OneTrust with “misleading settings”. They should also work with design tricks (“dark patterns”) in order to achieve the broadest possible approval.
At the beginning of March, Noyb informed 270 website operators of possible violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, according to the organization, 80 percent of those addressed “did not fully comply” with the request for corrections, so that after a period of 60 days they lodged complaints with the authorities.
In a first round in May 2021, 42 percent of all those warned at the time responded to the organization’s criticism. However, there have not yet been any decisions from the control authorities who were contacted afterwards.
“We want to ensure compliance with the regulations, ideally without filing a complaint at all,” said Noyb chairman Max Schrems. OneTrust itself has proactively pointed out the problem to other operators and revised the default settings. Noyb now also wants to target websites that use consent platforms such as TrustArc, Cookiebot, Usercentrics and Quantcast.
(olb)
