For many users, cookie banners are one of the biggest annoyances when surfing the internet. At the same time, they pose a fundamental problem for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): what is actually intended to serve informational self-determination is often devalued by complex, confusing, and repetitive consent requests. Consenter is a new, officially recognized trust service that addresses this issue and aims to make consent on the web more user-friendly, transparent, and effective. The service is a product of Law & Innovation Technology GmbH, a spin-off of ECDF professor Max von Grafenstein, and is based on research results developed in cooperation with the Berlin University of the Arts, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, and the ECDF.
A central component of Consenter is a so-called consent agent—a free browser extension that allows users to set their privacy preferences centrally once. These preferences are automatically transmitted when visiting a website, provided that the site supports the relevant standards. This eliminates many cookie banners without users losing control over their decisions. Websites that do not respect consent can be blocked. Consenter takes a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, the service enables consumers to make informed and self-determined decisions about which purposes of data processing they want to consent to and which they do not. On the other hand, Consenter supports website operators in providing transparent, trustworthy, and GDPR-compliant consent banners and communicating their level of data protection in an understandable way. For the first time, data protection-friendly offerings have the opportunity to clearly and comprehensibly distinguish themselves from less trustworthy practices.
A key feature of the consent agent is the clear presentation of the benefits and risks of different data processing purposes. Clear language and intuitive visualizations explain what data is to be processed for—such as improving websites, activating additional functions, personalizing content, or personalized advertising. Users can decide separately for each purpose. The underlying risk and benefit assessments are based on empirical research and collaboration with international data protection experts and aim to neither obscure nor exaggerate risks.
“Consent can only fulfill its protective function if it is understandable, comparable, and manageable for people,” says Max von Grafenstein, founder of Consenter and professor of digital self-determination at the Einstein Center Digital Future and the Berlin University of the Arts. “With Consenter, we show that user-friendly design, legal requirements, and data-driven innovation do not have to be contradictory.”
At the same time, many website operators can gain a competitive advantage from this greater transparency by increasing their users' confidence in sharing their data. Consenter was developed by the academic spin-off Law & Innovation on the basis of a multi-year interdisciplinary research process at the Einstein Center Digital Future, the Berlin University of the Arts, and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.
A particular focus was placed on user-centered design: different prototypes of the consent interfaces were tested in qualitative tests and then compared in quantitative A/B tests. The most effective designs are considered “state of the art” and serve as the new standard for legally compliant consent design in accordance with Art. 25 (1) GDPR.
The Consenter Agent has been available for Google Chrome since December 18, 2025, and can be used free of charge. Website operators can use the Consenter Manager to configure a trusted cookie banner that communicates with the agent. Additional features for the trusted cookie banner and a Safari and Firefox version of the agent are planned for the coming months.
Launch event on January 28, 2026
On January 28, 2026, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society and the Einstein Center Digital Future invite you to the official launch of Consenter. Under the title “From a flood of consent to user-friendly control: A new tool for effective self-determination over your data,” the service will be presented and discussed publicly for the first time. The event will center on a panel discussion on the competitive advantage of the GDPR with Jan Philipp Albrecht (former rapporteur of the EU Parliament on the GDPR), Dirk Freytag (President of the BVDW), Christian Groß (economist on the executive staff of the Federal Data Protection Commissioner), and Frederick Richter (Data Protection Foundation). Due to high demand, registration for the event is already closed. You are welcome to sign up for the mailing list on the Consenter website, where you will receive a summary of the event and information about new developments.