The end of these boring cookie pop-ups on websites?

The global influence of EU cookies laws is said to be overhauled later this year.

Cookies contain information on visitors to websites and is crucial for certain basic functions, such as remembering your username. But they can also be a nightmare of confidentiality. Your data collected by these cookies can be sold to third -party companies and used for targeted advertising.

To cope with the troubled implications of cookies, the European Union promulgated a cookie law in 2009, based on a previous confidentiality directive. With this new law, websites had to ask European visitors to use cookies. Many companies have changed their systems to include consent pop-ups for users around the world, rather than creating European versions distinct from their sites, which has also affected Americans.

Although the objective was to return power to users and let them decide which cookies they agreed or not, the law has since had unforeseen consequences, the principal being “fatigue of cookies”. Users are now bombed with consent pop-ups so often that they rarely read them, choosing to simply click to accept cookies. Thus, consent pop-ups give you the impression of being safe, but are not really good to offer real protection.

The EU has been trying to solve this problem for some time now. At the beginning of last year, they tried to do so with a “cookies commitment” which had major platforms belonging to people like Amazon, Apple, Meta and Bytedance Sign an optional agreement promising to improve cookie pop-ups. Unsurprisingly, we should not have worked as well as they hoped.

Now, EU officials plan to present a rule that responds to this concern for good in December, politico reported on Monday. They organize meetings with the technological industry to agree on a strategy, and many ideas have been launched.

In a note sent to an industry discussion group, the European Commission has launched the idea that users can have preferences for cookies in their browsers rather than asking each website to request consent, reports Politico.

Danish authorities have suggested completely deleting consent banners for cookies that are used for “technically necessary” functions “as simple statistics, rather than those deemed more harmful, such as sharing third -party data.

Other European officials believe that the rules of cookies should be integrated into the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) of the EU, an online online law that has shaped the Internet when it was adopted in 2018. It also upset large technological companies, many of which have been affected by major penalties on the offense. Meta, for example, was affected with a fine of $ 1.3 billion in 2023 for violating the confidentiality of user data on Facebook.

The GDPR triggered an avalanche of cookies when it passed. Cookies are technically subject to the GDPR, but this law is not the main way in which the EU governs the use of cookies; They have the EPRIVACY directive for this.

The GDPR is supposed to have a “risk -based approach”, notes Politico, instead of the strict consent requirements expressed by the EPRIVACY directive. This means that if the governance of cookies has passed to the GDPR, it will be up to technological companies to adjust the way in which they process cookies according to the level of risk associated with the data they collect.

No matter how the EU finally decides to solve its Pop-Up Cookie and consent problem, there is undoubtedly the room for improvement.

Consent pop-ups in general have been criticized by data confidentiality experts as a remedy at the surface level which can be easily manipulated by technological companies. One way they do is via “dark models”, deceptive design techniques they use to handle your online behavior. The European Union should respond to these concerns next year in new legislation called the Digital Equity Act.