One click

If you visit Daily Mail Online and click on “got it”, you allow them to share your personal information with 835 other companies. One-click and you have accepted 835 privacy policies.

Research and project description

Granting informed consent is one of the foundations for collecting personal data. However, in practice, this consideration is often replaced by a thoughtless click on ‘agree’ – on top of that, one click might approve hundreds of other conditions. Julia Janssen dived into the world of the so-called ‘Trusted Third Party Hosting Network’, an ally of companies to collect and share as much data as possible from their visitors.

One click on ‘got it’ when visiting the webpage of Daily Mail provides permission that they may share your personal information with 835 other companies. This way, they can all benefit from your data; by monetizing your attention in advertising models. One click and all these companies know exactly who you are, where you are, what you are thinking about at this very moment and what you might desire.

Janssen discovered this method by not clicking on ‘got it’, but the almost invisible option next to it; ‘settings’. To make these mechanisms visible, she manually collected all the 835 conditions and published a book, One Click – ten centimetres thick, A4 in size, filled with five pt. text size, divided over five columns. In other words, lots of small print.

All contracts you sign at the speed of 0.0146 seconds. Your elegantly packaged informed consent.