14 DAY TRIAL // A group of online privacy campaigners announced Monday that it is suing hundreds of websites for using pop-up banners requesting users to accept cookies, according to Euractiv.
The Vienna-based NOYB group (an acronym for none of your business) announced that it would present more than 500 draft complaints to firms on what is called the cookie banner terror, that has turned the Internet into a frustrating experience for people all throughout Europe.
According to NOYB, many of the consent pop-ups that have become practically ubiquitous on the Internet violate EU legislation, particularly the landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
According to the Group, the aforementioned pop-ups do not provide the user with the basic yes or no to data collection that the law requires. Moreover, the banners are often structured in a way that makes it very difficult to click anything other than the Accept button.
The draft complaints were submitted to companies in 33 countries, including all European Economic Area (EEA) member states except Malta and Liechtenstein.
NOYB said it will file the complaints with regulators in a month if the sites do not take steps to bring the cookie banners into compliance with privacy laws and correct this unfair and frustrating design. NOYB's founders include Austrian activist Max Schrems, who has won a series of court triumphs in the fight for Internet privacy, including sabotaging major EU-US data-sharing agreements.
GDPR principles oblige users to click the Accept button even it angers them
Schrems said in a statement "Frustrating people into clicking 'okay' is a clear violation of the GDPR’s principles".
"Under the law, companies must facilitate users to express their choice and design systems fairly".
NOYB claims to have developed an automated system to identify cookie banners that violate privacy standards. This change could allow the organization to file up to 10,000 complaints in a single year. If the group's approach is successful, users should see simple and obvious yes or no options for the data collection on a growing number of websites in the coming months.
Google has pledged not to track individual online activity as it begins to deploy a new approach to targeted advertising that does not rely on cookies. The company's widely used Chrome browser recently began exploring an alternative to tracking that it says could improve online privacy while still allowing advertisers to send relevant ads.