Are you sick of dispense with labyrinthine cookie consent popups just to pilot the web without being get across ? Well , researchers from Aarhus University , Denmark , have created a internet browser extension that automatically winnow out them for you .
Consent - O - Maticis free and available forMozilla Firefox , Google Chromeand other chromium - based browsers , andSafarifor macOS and iOS . The web browser app extension already had 22,000 tryout user worldwide before becoming publicly useable .
“ The way of life it work is that we manually analyze a pop - up to see how it is designed , and then we write the code to press clitoris and check box , ” Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose , a Consent - O - Matic developer and associate professor in the Department of Computer Science , say in astatement . “ Sometimes a website might have done things differently , and in that face , we will always endeavor to present the most privacy bear on preferences . Websites might also use a pop - up that we have n’t seen yet , which entail Consent - O - Matic ca n’t detect it . ”
“ The code for Consent - O - Matic is available candid - informant onGithub [ … ] , so if anyone desire to have a facial expression , or contribute with new rules for a pa - up , they can do that . ”
Amazing as this is , it ’s inauspicious that the package even needs to survive . “ People should have control over theirpersonal data , but the way these consent pop - ups are design make it difficult . Clicking through multiple screens and toggling hundreds of sliders for every website you visit go exhausting and annoying , so it ’s easier to just hit the fully grown green button , ” Midas Nouwens , a Consent - O - Matic developer and assistant professor in the Department of Digital Design & Information Studies , explained . “ We built Consent - group O - Matic to let people practice their digital rights , and make it as sluttish as potential . ”
Indeed , a2020 paperco - author by Nouwens highlights the often shady exercise of consent direction platforms ( CMPs ) .
“ The results of our empirical survey of CMPs today illustrate the extent to which illegal practices dominate , with vendors of CMPs bend a blind optic to – or worse , incentivising – distinctly illegal configurations of their systems , ” the authorswrite . “ Enforcement in this area is sorely lacking . ”
“ port project that assay to guide conclusion - drug user into hope behavior through malicious interaction rate of flow are denote to as ‘ dark patterns ’ , ” the source explain , adding that “ A centre takeout from the user study is that placing controls or information below the first level return it efficaciously ignored . ”
It seems that CMPs are already direct posting and trying to labour back , with OneTrust LLCbeing granted a patenton September 6 , 2022 , for “ datum processing organization and methods for detect tools for the automatic block of consent requests . ”
“ The patent is pretty uproarious . The idea it is premised on seems to be that a refusal of consent has to have the same gamy monetary standard as a granting of consent [ … ] But that ’s but incorrect , ” Michael Veale , a professor of digital right and privacy at UCL Laws , toldMotherboard . “ moreover , data protection practice of law specifically recognises that an individual ' may exert his or her right to object by automatise agency using technical specifications . ”
" The entire adtech industry ’s scheme over recent years has been to seek to misinterpret ordinance to make consent seem like a joke , ” Veale explain . “ The legal world is that this is not consent , and that such practice are themselves illegal . datum protection authorities are in the end waking up to that . ”
