“Google informed us that they now want to establish this “reject everything” button bit by bit in the European Union, Switzerland and Great Britain,” said Hamburg’s top data protection officer Thomas Fuchs on Wednesday when presenting his authority’s activity report for 2021.
The start is probably in France, where a fine has already been imposed Google and Facebook had been imposed, but Germany will follow relatively soon, said Fuchs. He had Google according to their own statements, last week requested in a letter to revise the cookie banners because they did not meet the data protection requirements. “The good news is that there is now a written commitment from Google “there is” to program this button promptly and then make it available as a standard, emphasized Fuchs. Because many are extremely annoyed by cookie banners, they simply click away by agreeing to them. But if they want to reject them, they usually have to go deep into selection mechanisms.
“It is therefore of great importance that everyone who surfs the Internet must also have the option of being able to refuse the use of their data, in particular for advertising purposes, right at the first level (…).” Fuchs announced that he would now also be approaching Facebook. He is responsible for both groups because their German headquarters are in Hamburg.
Google rejected the representation of the Hamburg data protection officer. A spokeswoman confirmed that Fuchs had written a request for a revision of the cookie banner and that the answer was that the “Reject all” button would be introduced in the EU, Switzerland and Great Britain. This is not happening because of Fuchs’ request, but because of the order of the French data protection authority CNIL, the spokeswoman emphasized. This had in January around two Google-Subsidiaries fined a total of 150 million euros, against Facebook it is 60 million euros.
Source: Nachrichten
