Can the GPC standard eliminate consent banners in the EU?
For EU policymakers and web users, the paper assesses a potential technical solution to consent banner fatigue, but the findings are incremental as they highlight legal incompatibilities without proposing a concrete resolution.
The paper evaluates whether the Global Privacy Control (GPC) standard can be adapted to the EU legal framework to reduce consent banners and mitigate consent fatigue. It identifies friction between GPC and current EU data protection law, but suggests that with legislative amendments (e.g., the Digital Omnibus), automated signals could be used for consent expression.
In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation and the ePrivacy Directive mandate consent for the use of personal data for the purpose of behavioural advertising and tracking technologies. However, the ubiquity of consent banners has led to widespread consent fatigue and questions about the effectiveness of these mechanisms in protecting data subjects' data. To simplify digital laws and make the EU more competitive, the EU Commission recently proposed the Digital Omnibus, introducing a new Article 88b GDPR to express data subjects' choices in a technical way. While the Digital Omnibus is under legislative negotiation, California residents and residents of other US states can already exercise their rights via Global Privacy Control (GPC), a privacy signal to automatically broadcast a legally binding opt-out request to websites. In light of the Digital Omnibus, we evaluate to which extent GPC can be adapted to the EU legal framework to reduce consent banners, mitigate consent fatigue, and improve data protection for EU users. GPC is based on a technical specification, currently being standardised at the World Wide Web Consortium. By sending a GPC signal, data subjects can express their refusal or withdrawal of consent under the GDPR to the use of their personal data for cross-context ad targeting and, in some cases, to express their objection under the GDPR against the use of their data for such purposes. Our evaluation identifies friction between the GPC specification and current EU data protection law. In the longer term, it would be possible for the EU legislator to amend EU laws, as proposed in the current Digital Omnibus, in such a way that internet users can use automated signals to express choices about personal data use and online tracking. In the shorter term, websites and companies who conduct online tracking can already honour GPC.