Launch: „Consenter“ - A new tool for effective self-determination of data

The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, together with the ECDF, is launching Consenter – the first officially recognised service for managing legally compliant and trustworthy consent. The well-known cookie banners are not only annoying for consumers, but also pose a fundamental problem for the General Data Protection Regulation: what is actually intended to serve informational self-determination is significantly devalued by the common practice of cookie banners.

At the event ‘From a flood of consent to user-friendly control: A new tool for effective self-determination over your data,’ we will introduce you to Consenter – a trust service that connects users, service providers and technology providers and enables them to easily use lawful and trustworthy technologies for processing personal data. A central component of Consenter is a so-called consent agent, a browser extension that allows users to make clear and well-informed decisions about who they give their consent to on the internet for what purposes – and what they do not consent to. At the same time, the service supports website operators in displaying transparent, trust-building and GDPR-compliant consent banners. This gives privacy-friendly services the opportunity to communicate their level of data protection in a simple and understandable way for the first time. Since 18 December 2025, consumers have been able to download the consent agent, the Consenter Agent, here (Google Chrome). As a website operator, you can configure a trustworthy cookie banner in the Consenter Manager here that can communicate with the Consenter Agent.

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

Programme:

4 p.m.: Start of programme

- Keynote speech by Jeanette Hofmann, Director of Research and Start-ups at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

- Presentation of ‘Consenter’ by founder and ECDF professor Max von Grafenstein

- Panel discussion with experts:

• Dirk Freytag (President of the German Federal Association of the Digital Economy)
• Jan Philipp Albrecht (Executive Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation)
• Christian Groß (Executive Staff of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information)
• Frederik Richter (Executive Director of the Data Protection Foundation, moderator) 

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 receipt of the final confirmation, which follows the automated registration confirmation.