Consent interfaces can undermine genuine choice
A consent dialogue where accepting takes one click and refusing takes four is not collecting a free choice.
Design determines outcome far more than the words do, and regulators have said so repeatedly. If the interface is built to produce agreement, the consent it produces is fragile, because the legal test is whether the choice was genuine rather than whether a box was ticked.
More on Privacy engineering
- Anonymisation is about re-identification riskThe name was the easy part
- Differential privacy limits one person's influenceOne person cannot move the needle
- Purpose limitation prevents silent mission creepThe pipe was laid for one thing
- Privacy by design moves decisions earlierA line on the plan, or a hole in the wall
- A privacy notice does not create permissionTelling is not asking
- Data subject rights depend on finding the dataThe right ends where the index does
