Cookie banners: G7 urged to consider solution to pop-up notices

The UK's information commissioner is to ask some of the most powerful countries in the world to join forces against cookie pop-ups online.

Elizabeth Denham will meet with her counterparts in the G7 (Group of Seven) nations on Tuesday.

Each country will raise a technology problem they believe can be solved with closer co-operation, with Ms Denham taking aim at cookie banners.

"No single country can tackle this issue alone," Ms Denham said.

"That is why I am calling on my G7 colleagues to use our convening power. Together we can engage with technology firms and standards organisations to develop a co-ordinated approach to this challenge."

Cookie pop-ups are widely disliked by internet users and businesses - who see them as an annoying obstacle - and by privacy advocates, who believe so-called "dark patterns" trick people into accepting privacy invasions, rather than read through pages of settings on every website.

"I often hear people say they are tired of having to engage with so many cookie pop-ups," Ms Denham said. "That fatigue is leading to people giving more personal data than they would like."

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) - the UK's national data watchdog - said it would pitch a "vision for the future".

In it, web browsers or even device-wide settings will "allow people to set lasting privacy preferences of their choosing, rather than having to do that through pop-ups every time they visit a website".

That would "ensure people's privacy preferences are respected" while improving the experience, it said.

The ICO said it believes such an approach is "already technologically possible and compliant with data protection law".

However, achieving it would require co-operation among different technology firms or standards organisations.

The ICO said it believes that the combined weight of the G7 authorities "could have a major impact" in steering big tech firms to develop a solution.

Ms Denham is now the outgoing commissioner.

He told the Telegraph that the new commissioner would "shake up" data rules, including promising to do something about cookies.

Mr Dowden suggested that "high risk" sites would still need similar notices, but that many of them are "pointless" - and said that such changes are a "prize" of leaving the EU.

The UK is expected to adhere to similar privacy standards as the EU as part of an agreement over "data adequacy" - a complex area governing how private information is stored and shared across borders.

But the G7, as a collection of some of the world's wealthiest liberal democracies, has members both inside and outside the EU.

Ms Denham will be making her pitch to the privacy regulators in Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United States, and Germany.

Any co-ordinated solution would probably take a long time to be rolled out, because new internet standards usually have a long formal process.

Until then, Ms Denham said she - as the regulator, "expect[s] businesses to comply with current laws".