Cookie banners soon illegal? Privacy advocates pass far-reaching verdict

The Belgian data protection authority Autorité de protection des données (APD) has declared the Transparency & Consent Framework standard, which is central to online advertising, to be inadmissible. The advertising organization IAB Europe is to pay a fine of 250,000 euros. In addition, all collected data must be deleted.

The decision was made according to the “One Stop Shop” principle of the General Data Protection Regulation, as “heise” reports. It therefore applies to the entire EU. Thus, it could trigger an earthquake in the media and advertising industry.

Transparency & Consent Framework for cookies is disallowed

The Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) is the central standard behind the well-known and hated cookie banners. The most important task of the TCF is the passing on of consent to data processing for advertising purposes. If you click on “Accept” for a banner, a so-called TC string is generated. These are used to create user profiles, which are then auctioned off to advertising partners in real time.

The data protection officers have now decided that such TC strings are already personal data and must be treated accordingly in accordance with the GDPR. Here, too, you need the consent of the user and a person responsible for the further processing of data from thousands of companies.

The advertising industry wants to take action against the decision

In addition, the concrete implementation of the TCF is not sufficient. The users were not made sufficiently clear about the extent of the data transfer in the background. In addition, users have little opportunity to effectively understand the processed data. Data protection officer Hielke Hijmans says: “People are asked to give their consent, but most of them do not know that their profiles are sold many times a day in order to provide them with personalized advertising.”

Naturally, opinions differ in the advertising industry. IAB Europe has already announced that it intends to take legal action against this decision. One is optimistic that one will come to a solution acceptable to all sides. It remains to be seen whether the cookie banners will finally be a thing of the past.