Overheated smartphones through cookie banners


01.04.2021

In the last few weeks we have received some reports about smartphones getting hot by visiting various websites. We were able to reproduce the problem, apparently cookie banners are causing the heating. The smartphones sometimes get extremely hot, so there is a risk of explosion from overheated batteries. Since cookie banners are installed in almost all websites, we recommend not using smartphones for the next few days.

Cookie banners prevent the unwanted storage of cookies and similar technologies, as well as unwanted tracking pixels. For this, they inject special (Java-)scripts into the websites. At the same time, the browser providers try to use appropriate techniques to prevent unwanted cookies and tracking. These two technologies seem to slow each other down and thus increase the load on the smartphone processor. The increased computing requirements of the processor cause the smartphone to get extremly hot.

The problem affects all brands, especially older, low-performance smartphones. We therefore advise not using a smartphone until a solution to the problem has been found.


Note April 1st, 2021, 8 p.m: That was of course an April Fool's joke, but you probably knew that.


Autor:

Andi Petzoldt