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An end to the click marathon: New tool to put an end to cookie chaos

5-11-2025

Translation: machine translated

Bye bye cookie banner? With the "Consenter" tool, the constant consent and rejection on websites should soon be history.

The ubiquitous cookie banners on websites are an everyday occurrence for users and often a nuisance. Time and again, they have to decide whether to allow or reject tracking cookies, often in confusing windows with hidden options and different designs. Now something seems to be happening in Germany: For the first time, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) has recognised a tool that is designed to manage these consents centrally.

How «Consenter» works

The service is called «Consenter» (German: «Zustimmer») and was developed by the German legal tech company Law & Innovation Technology GmbH. This means: you enter your cookie preferences once, then they should apply to all websites - and the cookie banners disappear. At least in theory. How well this works also depends on whether the operators of the websites allow this - they cannot be forced to do so. Only if many suppliers implement the interfaces for consent management will the tool actually work. You can use the tool from the end of November.

What are the differences to other such tools?

Why has the BfDI recognised this tool and not others? The basis for this lies in the tool's conformity with the so-called Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act (TDDDG) and the «Consent Management Ordinance». This creates a legal basis for so-called consent management services. This should make it possible to minimise consent for cookie banners while still complying with the regulations.

The provisions of the TDDDG are clear:

A recognised service must disclose which suppliers and purposes are behind the data use (EinwV § 3 para. 2).
Users must be able to change or revoke their decisions at any time (EinwV § 4 para. 1 no. 2).
It must be possible to switch to another recognised service without complications (EinwV § 5 para. 1 no. 1 and 2).
The supplier must not have any commercial interest of its own in the granting of consent (Section 26 (1) No. 2 TDDDG).

The developer company itself says that it wants to show with the «Consenter» that digital self-determination and ease of use do not have to be opposites. Only time will tell whether this will prevail.

Header image: Shutterstock

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Florian Bodoky

Editor

Florian.Bodoky@digitecgalaxus.ch

I've been tinkering with digital networks ever since I found out how to activate both telephone channels on the ISDN card for greater bandwidth. As for the analogue variety, I've been doing that since I learned to talk. Though Winterthur is my adoptive home city, my heart still bleeds red and blue.

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