Analyzing Cookies Compliance with the GDPR

With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), cookie consent notices have become a widespread phenomenon across the web.They come in the form of popups and banners that ask the visitor whether they consent to the collection of personal data, tracking, and the setting of cookies in the visitor’s browser, separated by individual usage purposes.While consent notices give the user the impression that they have control over their privacy and personal data rights, many websites use dark patterns to nudge and deceive users, and others outright ignore the user’s privacy preferences.We try to address this problem by developing a browser extension that can locally enforce a user’s cookie consent choices regardless of how the website behaves.First, we perform …