BrowserConsent: answer every cookie banner once

BrowserConsent is out: a free, open source browser extension that answers cookie banners for you. You choose Reject all or Accept all once, and it gives every website that answer. It is in the Chrome Web Store today, and the BrowserConsent page has the Firefox download.

This post is about two things: why a company that makes cookie banners built a tool for skipping them, and exactly which consent platforms it handles from day one.

Consent is broken

Cookie consent was meant to be a choice. What people got is a chore: the same question on every site, in a slightly different layout each time, until answering it stops meaning anything. A choice made on autopilot is not much of a choice.

Too often it is not an honest question either. Websites set tracking cookies before you have consented, and many still have them in place after you have said no. And it is often not as easy to decline as it is to accept. In September we visited 3,705 Swedish e-commerce sites as a first-time visitor and published what we found:

• 1,894 of them, just over half, had set non-essential cookies before we were asked anything.
• 984 showed a banner with no way to refuse on its first screen, and another 284 offered a refusal that was less prominent than accepting.
• Where there was a refuse button we clicked it, on 2,058 sites. Only 1,123 were free of non-essential cookies afterwards.
• 681 asked first and took no for an answer.

So the visitor is asked constantly, often after the fact. Saying no is harder than saying yes, and it does not reliably mean no. These are the same things regulators keep punishing, and the banners are still there.

Why we are the ones building this

Katla is the website's side of consent. We exist so that a site blocks before it asks, offers no as plainly as yes, and keeps a record of the answer. But a consent platform can only fix the sites that install it, one site at a time.

The visitor's side has had nothing. No way to say it once and have it carried with you, and no way to see whether your answer was respected. BrowserConsent is that missing half:

• You decide once. Before it runs anywhere, you read what it does and pick Reject all or Accept all yourself. It does not invent consent. It carries out the one you gave.
• The site's record is right. Where a consent platform has its own JavaScript API, your choice is recorded through it, so the site's consent log and signals like Google Consent Mode say what you actually chose.
• You can see who ignores it. The toolbar badge turns red when a site sets a tracking cookie or sends a pixel before you answered, or after you said no. It knows 34 common trackers, and it can block them if you switch that on.

It is open source under the MIT licence, and it collects nothing: no servers, no analytics, no remote code.

The 39 consent platforms it knows today

As of version 1.1.1, BrowserConsent recognises 39 consent platforms (CMPs). They fall into two groups.

Answered through the platform's own API (18). Katla, OneTrust, Cookiebot, Usercentrics, Didomi, Complianz, Klaro, iubenda, CookieFirst, consentmanager.net, Cookie Information, CookieHub, Tealium, Piwik PRO, CookieScript, Secure Privacy, Shopify and Wix.

Answered by pressing the banner's own button (21). InMobi Choice (Quantcast), Sourcepoint, TrustArc, Google Funding Choices, Google, CookieYes, Osano, Termly, Borlabs Cookie, Axeptio, Civic Cookie Control, Crownpeak (Evidon), GDPR Cookie Compliance (Moove), Cookie Notice & Compliance, Cookie Tractor, CookieConsent, Cookie Consent (Insites), HubSpot, Ezoic, Amazon and Meta (Facebook and Instagram).

The API route is the better one, which is why it is tried first. A button press tells the banner what you chose. An API call tells the platform, and the platform then updates everything that depends on it.

What it will not do

• Override you. Banners you have already answered are left alone, and it steps aside the moment you click or type on a page.
• Dig through settings screens. If a banner has no way to refuse on its first screen, it is left for you.
• Guess. A banner it does not recognise is left alone. There is an experimental option to answer those by their button text, in 12 languages, and it is off unless you turn it on.
• Treat Accept all lightly. Accepting gives websites and their partners real consent, so the extension asks you to agree to that separately.

Get it, and tell us what is missing

The same listing works in Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers. For Firefox, the BrowserConsent page has the download and the steps to load it by hand.

If you meet a banner it does not answer, open an issue with the site's address. The list of 39 is where we start, not where we stop.

And if you run a website: your visitors are getting tools like this one. A banner that blocks before consent and takes no for an answer has nothing to fear from them. Check what yours does.