On January 28, 2026, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, together with the ECDF, invites you to the launch of Consenter – the first officially recognized service for managing legally compliant and trustworthy consent. The omnipresent cookie banners are not only annoying for consumers, but also represent a fundamental problem of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): what is intended to serve informational self-determination is significantly undermined by current cookie banner practices.

At the event "From consent to control: A new tool for effective self-determination over your data" we will introduce Consenter – a trust service that connects users, service providers and technology providers in order to empower them to jointly and easily use lawful and trustworthy technologies for the processing of personal data. A core component of Consenter is a so-called consent agent, a browser extension that enables users to clearly decide to whom they give their consent online and for which purposes – and for which they do not. At the same time, the service supports website operators in deploying transparent, trust-enhancing and GDPR-compliant consent banners. In this way, privacy-friendly services are, for the first time, given the opportunity to communicate their level of data protection in a simple and comprehensible manner. Since December 18, 2025, consumers have been able to download the privacy consent agent, the 'Consenter Agent', here (Google Chrome). Website operators can use the Consenter Manager to configure a trustworthy cookie banner, that is able to communicate with the Consenter Agent, here.

Consenter was developed by the academic spin-off "Law & Innovation", which is based on a multi-year interdisciplinary research process at the ECDF, the Berlin University of the Arts and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. 

Program:

4:00 PM: Start of program

• Keynote by Jeanette Hofmann, research and founding director of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society 
• Introduction of „Consenter“ by founder and ECDF Professor Max von Grafenstein
• Paneldiscussion with experts:

Dirk Freytag (President German Association for the Digital Economy)

Jan Philipp Albrecht (Board of Directors at Heinrich Böll Foundation)

Christian Groß (Executive Staff for the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information)

Frederik Richter (Board of Directors at Stiftung Datenschutz, Moderation) 

Venue:

Einstein Center Digital Future
Conference Hall, 1st Floor
Wilhelmstr. 67
10117 Berlin

Further information on registration //here.  

Please note that participation is only possible after receiving the final confirmation, which will follow after the automated registration confirmation.