According to the NRW consumer center, Google also violates EU law with its cookie banners.
Berlin Before the regional court of Berlin, the consumer center of North Rhine-Westphalia is suing the US technology giant Google – because of its cookie banners. “With tricks in the design of the cookie banners, companies are trying to obtain the consent of consumers in order to get as much personal information as possible, to collect and process it,” explained Wolfgang Schuldzinski, the board member of the consumer Center NRW, the procedure on Wednesday.
It must be just as easy to reject cookies as to accept them in order to prevent reckless data disclosure. This is not the case with the websites of Google’s search engine. The U.S. group was not immediately available for comment.
Cookies are used to identify Internet users and to insert targeted advertising into your browser. They are stored on the consumer’s online devices and contain, for example, information about location and visited websites, but must be approved by the user. A cookie banner manages the user’s consent. As a rule, this is requested via a pop-up window when visiting a website for the first time.
The Verbraucherzentrale NRW considers the corresponding design on the websites of the Google search engine to be inadmissible. For example, only one click is required for consent, but for rejection, the user must first switch to a second level of the banner, where at least three different categories of cookies must then be rejected individually.
With these so-called dark patterns, Google violates national data protection regulations from the Telecommunications-Telemedia-Data Protection Act (TTDSG) as well as EU law. The planned EU-wide Digital Services Act (DSA) wants to completely ban these manipulative design practices.
