"Data Privacy - Are You Sure You Want a Cookie?"

New research from Copenhagen Business School finds that the designers of cookie banners can impact users' privacy choices through the manipulation of the choice architecture. Simple changes can increase absolute consent by 17 percent. A website cookie banner is put in place as the consent management tool that gives users the opportunity to consent to the processing of their personal data. With the current legal framework, users need to actively provide consent. Therefore, manipulations of the banner can affect a user's decision about whether to make an active choice and the outcome of this choice (i.e., accept or decline consent). Findings from this study provide empirical evidence showing that people's data privacy decisions can easily be manipulated. The empirical evidence that supports the study's conclusions was gathered by testing a public website's different banner designs. The researchers analyzed how their manipulations affected 1,493 user interactions with the cookie banner and the resulting privacy choice. Although several official guides on banner design have been released since the experiment, the researchers argue that website owners remain privileged. One researcher stresses that nudging users into making a privacy choice could be good, but manipulating them into providing consent should be opposed. This study creates awareness and action by policymakers. It also recognizes that the problems of manipulative choice architecture within the digital space (also called dark patterns), are still essential topics for debate. They introduced a conceptual distinction between choice-making architecture and choice outcome architecture to help have a more structured debate. The researchers concluded that it will be up to the consumer to detect, avoid and resist manipulative choice architecture. Users and consumers are encouraged to learn about the broader issues associated with dark patterns and the tricks used in websites and apps to become less responsive to such manipulations. This article continues to discuss privacy manipulation, protecting user data, and the importance of learning about dark patterns.

Copenhagen Business School reports "Data Privacy - Are You Sure You Want a Cookie?"