Europeans spend more than 575 million hours managing cookie consent banners, according to Legiscope

European users spend more than 575 million hours in total managing the cookie consent banners required by the General Data Protection Regulation (RGDP) to access web pages, according to recent estimates by Legiscope.

In Europa, Advertising messages of this type are required by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC, which determines that websites must obtain the express consent of users before accessing or storing their information.

This regulation, which began to be applied in all Member States since May 25, 2018, seeks to guarantee the rights and freedoms of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal information and, in particular, their right to privacy, as indicated in the official document.

While the intent behind these regulations is to improve privacy protection, the actual impact on privacy is “negligible” because “most cookie banners” are used to facilitate web analysisunderstand user behavior, manage the efficiency of ads or keyword traffic, according to Legiscope.

The developer of a ‘software’ based on the RGPD and driven by AI has clarified in her blog that, according to her calculations and based on the mandatory nature of this system, Europeans dedicate more than 575 million hours together to access the websites.

To reach this conclusion, it has gathered a series of data, such as the total population of the European Union (EU), which is approximately 449.2 million people. Taking into account that there is an internet penetration rate of around 90 percent, according to Eurostat data, it has taken as reference a total of 404.28 million Internet users.

Legiscope has also indicated that, on average, a user visits about 100 websites per month, which translates to 1,200 pages per year. Because about 85 percent of these sites display a cookie consent banner, a user will encounter a few 1,020 of them a year.

Assuming that a user needs an average of 5 seconds per interaction with a ‘banner’, it is equivalent to spending 5,100 seconds per year on this action, which translates into 1.42 hours per year according to their estimates. The result of multiplying the number of Europeans who use the Internet with this number is 575 million hours per year invested in this process.

Legiscope has also focused its results by country, indicating that one of the countries that wastes the most time in circumventing cookie consent banners is Germany, with 75.6 million users who dedicate 107.35 million hours to this. annual. In Spain 42.3 million people use the Internet, spending 60.04 million hours to this process.

The firm has also highlighted how banners can also represent a loss in terms of productivity and has indicated that the total cost of clicking on cookie banners is equivalent to a company of 287,500 employees spending one working day of 8 hours by clicking on them.

In this sense, Legiscope has indicated that for users these interactions with consent ads they cause “significant frustration and a complete loss of vigilance.” This fatigue results in the acceptance of terms of use “without thought and without due consideration,” which undermines the intent of the aforementioned regulation.

For this reason, the analysis concludes that this “flurry of requests” not only reduces productivity, but also decreases user satisfaction and affects their trust in online platforms. This situation demands an “urgent” review of the Directive on privacy and electronic communications, transforming it into a regulation that guarantees rapid adoption.