Researchers from the University of Michigan and Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany examined the cookie notices of roughly 5,000 websites to see whether they are compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, TechCrunch reports. In their upcoming paper on the subject, the researchers found 58% of notices are at the bottom of the screen and that 57% use “dark patterns” to influence users to consent to tracking. While 92% of those notices contain a link to a site’s privacy policy, only 39% mention why data has been collected. “Given the legal requirements for explicit, informed consent, it is obvious that the vast majority of cookie consent notices are not compliant with European privacy law,” the researchers state.
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