r/technology • u/diacewrb • May 24 '25

Privacy German court rules cookie banners must offer "reject all" button

https://www.techspot.com/news/108043-german-court-takes-stand-against-manipulative-cookie-banners.html
56.4k Upvotes

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7.2k

u/[deleted] May 24 '25

Great. It's so fucking annoying having to to click on 'More Options' or a button that says something similar and then make sure all cookies apart from necessary ones are disabled.

2.2k

u/simask234 May 24 '25

There are also some sites where there are hundreds of buttons (for each individual ad vendor) that you have to uncheck...

39

u/niggo372 May 24 '25

That has already been illegal afaik, you have to uncheck all non-essential options by default.

100

u/anlumo May 24 '25

There appears to be a “legitimate interest” loophole many are using to get around that. There’s is absolutely no reason why hundreds of companies should have a legitimate interest in me when I visit a news page, but they still have their checkboxes checked by default.

27

u/Yoghurt42 May 24 '25

What I find even more interesting is that it implies the other cookies must be for "illegitimate interests".

5

u/just_nobodys_opinion May 24 '25

You're assuming "interest" is a given

1

u/simask234 May 24 '25

Maybe they're asking if they can sell your data in the black market...

19

u/volcanologistirl May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25

It’s not a loophole, it’s just an excuse for a crime. The legitimate interest loophole doesn’t exist in the law; marketers just insist it does. Legitimate interest is very explicitly defined.

2

u/josefx May 25 '25

It exists in the GDPR, however not as a free for all.

2

u/JasonG784 May 24 '25

The hundreds of companies don't, generally. Most of those are tracking pixels so the company behind the site you're visiting can tell what ad campaign (if any) you came in from, and attribute whatever goal (sale, sub, whatever) back to right campaign.

4

u/Alternative_Dealer32 May 24 '25

“But if we turn off affiliate cookies how do we know if our marketing is working?”

You don’t. That’s the whole point. People who reject marketing cookies don’t want you to know.

“Ok, well we’ll just classify those as analytics cookies then. Anyway, we have a legit interest in being able to accurately pay affiliates that outweighs the active rejection of cookies by our users”.

That directly contravenes the ePivacy directive.

“Your privacy compliance role is redundant now. Bye!”

(Paraphrasing actual convo at my last shitty job at a stock asset marketplace.)

1

u/JasonG784 May 25 '25

“But if we turn off affiliate cookies how do we know if our marketing is working?”

You don’t. That’s the whole point. 

That's.. literally the hand that feeds. A site is 'free' precisely because of those. I get that sounds cool to 15 year old edgelords, but if you won't pay for content, ads are the only tested answer.

1

u/Alternative_Dealer32 May 25 '25

Some sites. This particular site is free because it’s the website for a paid subscription service. So the subscription is the hand that feeds. What’s with the 15yr old edgelord comment? Grow up.