By: Illia Belichenko A consent banner that actually works
Consent under paragraph 25 TDDDG is not needed for every script on a site, only for one that reads or writes data on the visitor's device without technical necessity, and that is exactly why a banner with only an accept button and no genuine refusal does not solve the problem, it creates a new one.
Technically necessary functions such as a shopping cart or a saved language choice run without consent, because without them the site simply cannot deliver what the visitor themselves asked for. Analytics, advertising and most embedded services do not fall into that category and need consent.
The European Court of Justice ruled in 2019 in the Planet49 case that a pre-ticked box does not amount to an active declaration of intent, and since then pre-checked boxes in banners no longer work legally, even if they can technically be unchecked with one click.
Germany's data protection authorities stated explicitly in their joint guidance for website operators from December 2021 that offering no rejection option at the same level of effort as consent on the first layer of a banner counts as an unfair attempt to influence the visitor.
Equal footing means not only that a reject button exists but that it is not visually hidden and no less prominent than the accept button. A banner where accept is highlighted in colour and reject sits in small print or only appears inside settings does not meet that bar.
Scripts for analytics, advertising and embedded services must not start until after a visitor clicks accept, not merely be visually covered by the banner. Technically that means blocking the script itself from loading, not just hiding its visible output.
Withdrawing consent has to be just as easy to reach as giving it, usually through a permanent footer link or a privacy settings icon, not only available on the first visit to the site.
Checking whether a banner actually blocks scripts works the same way as checking externally loaded fonts. Open the browser's network tab, reload the page before clicking anything in the banner, and see which domains are already trying to load.
If analytics starts before consent, the processing counts as unlawful from that moment on, and that cannot be fixed retroactively even if the visitor goes on to accept afterward.
A consent banner is easy to make formally present but legally useless, if the reject button is hidden and analytics scripts start before anyone clicks. Illia BizTech sets the banner up so reject sits on equal footing with accept on the first layer and scripts genuinely wait for the visitor's decision, rather than just being visually covered by the banner.
Illia BizTech builds and maintains websites for small and medium businesses in Russian, German and English, from the first version through ongoing maintenance and SEO work. A team carries the project from idea to launch without long internal approval chains, so the client speaks directly with the people writing the code and managing the content, not through a chain of account managers. That fits businesses moving to Germany or expanding into the German-speaking market who want to explain their task once, not repeat it on every call.