Sick of cookie banners?

Published on 12 November 2025 by Gee

If you think the GDPR has made banners asking you to accept cookies mandatory, this comic is for you.

Sick of cookie banners?

💡 If you too are annoyed by the famous cookie banners, you may have already heard this:

A woman behind her computer says: “Ugh, it's so annoying to always have to deal with cookie banners on websites!” A man says to her: “Well, blame the GDPR*! Thanks Europe for imposing this kind of stupidity on us!”

✷ General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adopted by the European Parliament in 2016.

Well, if you believe what the man says, we need to set the record straight.

I can't think of a better way to put it, so here goes:

The GDPR absolutely does not impose cookie acceptance banners.

Woman: “Oh. So what were you saying?” Man, arms crossed: “Oh yeah? Well, there weren't any before the GDPR, and they were put in place after the GDPR, right? Just stating facts.”

💡 Okay. Let's start from the beginning: first of all, in the digital world, a cookie is a piece of data that allows websites you visit to retain information (for example, keeping an account logged in, remembering your browsing history on the site, etc.).

The Geek Girl, eating a cookie: “Oh damn. Suddenly I'm a lot less interested.” Gee: “Sorry. But I've already covered cookies in a culinary context in another comic*.”

✷ See Atomic Cookies, if you're not afraid of fat and sugar.

▶️ First of all, if your website doesn't use cookies, then clearly you don't have to ask for cookie acceptance.

(By the most basic logic, since they don't exist).

The guy from the beginning: “Great, but all websites need cookies to function, right...?” Gee: “Well, actually, no: a website that can be visited without an account and doesn't offer any persistent data can function perfectly well without cookies.”

⚠️ And even if your site does need cookies to function, it's generally not necessary to put up an acceptance banner.

In particular, it's not necessary...

▶️ 1. If your cookies are used to remember account authentication, or for example to access a paid section of the site (paywall).

A small cookie with a sign: “OK, you're logged in as KevinWarriorz91, I'll remember that!” Another cookie looks at a log and says: “I remember that you're a subscriber and therefore have access to the site's premium content.” The smiley face, bored: “I thought we said they weren't culinary cookies...”

▶️ 2. If your cookies are used to store information, such as a shopping cart, interface customization, or any other persistent data.

Another cookie says: “OK, you put a copy of ‘The Unnecessary Adventures of Superfluous’ in your shopping cart*, I'm taking note of that.” Another replies: “Yeah, and I've noted that you're paying in dollars, which will be handy for displaying the price in the right currency.” The smiley face: “Well done, now I'm hungry.”

✷ An absolutely amazing comic book, and I'm not just saying that because I'm super objective since I wrote and drew it.

▶️ 3. Even in the case of visit statistics, cookies do not require a consent banner*.

One cookie says, “Hey, a new page view!” Another keeps a record and asks, “Is this a new visitor?” The first one replies, “No, they were already here before, I remember.” The smiley face is eating a cookie.

✷ Under certain conditions: that these statistics are used only for audience measurement, without being cross-referenced for other processing; that they are not transmitted to third parties; and that they are not cross-referenced between multiple sites.

💡 Yes, because in reality, the reason these cookie banners have appeared on many websites is that the GDPR requires consent to be obtained if your website transmits your visitors' data to third parties.

Before. An evil cookie with a camera and microphone arrives and says, “Oh, that's some nice data you've got there! I'm going to suck it all up so I can spy on you, bombard you with personalized ads, and sell it all to Cambridge Analytica.”

After. Same image, but the cookie adds: “Alright?” The smiley face: “The nuance is subtle.”

So yeah, I know, teasers will say that all you have to do is not mess around with people's data to do away with cookie banners.

A guy in a suit: “What?! But wait, if we respect the privacy of people who visit our sites, our business model will collapse and an entire industry will die!” Gee, indifferent: “Let it f##king die then. Did I miss the moment when I was supposed to worry about the survival of parasites?”

Note that it would be perfectly possible to obtain consent without annoying people with a banner.

With a checkbox in the site settings, for example.

Unchecked by default, of course.

The guy in the suit: “But if we do that, no one will click on it.” Gee: “And doesn't that make you realize that NO ONE wants your crap? And that it's only by forcing them that you manage to impose it on us?”

▶️ Just like advertising, businesses that use third-party cookies to track everyone rely entirely on the absence of consent, hence all the possible and imaginable dark patterns* to prevent you from saying no:

(Image taken from the French comic book Bastards, Inc)

✷ According to Wikipedia, a dark pattern “is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things”.

In short, when you see a banner asking you to consent to third-party cookies, while doing everything it can to prevent you from clicking “decline,” you can conclude several things:

⚠️ 1. This site is screwing around with your data.

Gee looks at his computer: “On the French train company SNCF website, my uBlock blocked seven third-party domains that wanted to access my data. How many of these domains do you think are related to railways, transportation, or even travel in the broadest sense?” The answers, as in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, are: “Zero. None. Not a single one. The limit of 1/x when x tends towards infinity.”

⚠️ 2. This site only asks for your consent because it's been forced to, otherwise it would be wiping its ass with your privacy in secret.

A nice guy says in a text surrounded by flowers and suns: “Your privacy is important to us!” Then he says, in a small text: “And that's why the European Parliament is forcing us to tell you how thoroughly we're plundering it!”

⚠️ 3. This site is probably still breaking the law.

Gee reads a newspaper: “A study has shown that 85% of websites do not meet the minimum requirements*: obligation to obtain explicit consent, possibility to refuse cookies as easily as to accept them, no pre-checked boxes...” The guy in the suit: “Another study commissioned by a far-left organization, no doubt! Damn commies!”

✷ See A Cross-Country Analysis of GDPR Cookie Banners and Flexible Methods for Scraping Them on arXiv.org.

In any case, and especially if the people behind these sites hide behind “it's the GDPR's fault”:

Tell them to eat ~~cookies~~ shit.

Note: Comic strip licensed under CC BY SA (grisebouille.net), drawn on October 17, 2025 by Gee.

Published on 12 November 2025 by Gee

Sick of cookie banners?

Sick of cookie banners?

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