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How Can ‘Consent Fatigue’ Be Overcome?

Written by Tom Ryan

Photo: Unsplash / Franck

Canada's privacy watchdog has charged Home Depot with failing to obtain customer consent before sharing their personal data with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The home improvement chain said it didn’t notify shoppers due to the risks of “consent fatigue.” Consent fatigue, also called “cookie fatigue,” refers to consumers agreeing to the terms of a data privacy consent form without reading the terms or fully understanding the implications of their choice. Online, cookie pop-ups, or data-tracking requests, have become particularly annoying as new privacy laws have increased the frequency with which they appear. Home Depot shared encoded email addresses and in-store purchase information with Meta when in-store shoppers chose to receive an e-receipt. Home Depot said it relied on implied consent with data-sharing terms available online and in-store upon request, but the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) said those guidelines weren’t readily available at checkout and shoppers would have had no reason to seek them out. “Consumers need clear information at key transaction points, empowering them to make decisions about how their personal information should be used,” OPC Commissioner Philippe Dufresne said. “Consent fatigue is not a valid reason for failing to obtain meaningful consent.” Time restrictions are believed to be a major factor driving consent fatigue as privacy policies tend to range from 2,500 and 4,500 words. A 2019 Pew survey found that only nine percent of Americans say they always read privacy policies. The policies are also difficult to understand. Wendy Wong, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, told CBC, “I think that we're placing the onus on the public to understand complex and vague legal documents.” A recent survey of U.S. adults taken from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found 80 percent believed that they had “little control over what marketers” could learn about them online while 73 percent did not have “the time to keep up with ways to control the information that companies” had about them. “Genuine opt out and opt in consent requires that people have knowledge about commercial data-extraction practices as well as a belief they can do something about them,” the report stated. “Americans have neither.”

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