October 2, 2019
On 1 October, Europe's highest court handed down its judgment on a series of questions referred to it by the German Federation of Consumer Organisations, in respect of the use of pre-ticked checkboxes for the storage of cookies by a German lottery website called Planet 49.
Following the Advocate General's earlier non-binding opinion published in March, the court concluded that:
Although the case was brought before the GDPR came into force on 25 May 2018, the court confirmed that its interpretation applied equally to the standard of consent under the GDPR and its predecessor, the Data Protection Directive. However, the court refused to consider whether consent to the processing of personal data for advertising purposes could be 'freely given', as required by both of those laws, as such question was not referred to the Court. In the context of the ICO's report into adtech and real-time bidding and the ongoing development of a new e-Privacy Regulation, this would have been helpful.
All-in-all, the judgment is unsurprising and reflects the updated guidance on the use cookies and similar technologies published by the ICO in July. Operators of websites - and apps - will need to review their existing cookie consent mechanisms to ensure that:
Stephenson Law has worked with numerous organisations to audit their use of cookies and consent mechanisms. If you would like to discuss further, please contact us. We’re the experts in getting data on your good side. Find out more about our data protection offering here.