Towards better consumer protection on online marketplaces: vzbv becomes trusted flagger

Consumers should be able to use the internet safely. This includes protecting consumers from unsafe products and unfair practices such as manipulation on online platforms. The so-called trusted flaggers contribute to this. They are supposed to alert providers of online platforms to possible illegal content and thus ensure a safe online environment. This is a requirement of the EU’s Digital Services Act. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband – vzbv) has been appointed as a trusted flagger by the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur, BNetzA).

Sven Scharioth, Director Market Monitoring at vzbv, comments:

“As a trusted flagger, vzbv helps to improve product safety and thus enhance consumer protection on online marketplaces. In future, the platforms will have to check and process notifications from vzbv about unsafe products and breaches of consumer law more quickly. After receiving the information, the platform alone decides whether to delete the offer.

Consumers trust that the products they buy online are safe. Unfortunately, this is too often not the case. Online platform providers are not obliged to actively monitor content. It is therefore all the more important that platforms find out about possible violations of product safety requirements and consumer law in other ways. But this requires organisations that bring possible infringements to the platforms’ attention in a credible manner.

The enforcement of laws that apply to platforms is essential for a safe and trustworthy online environment. As a trusted flagger, vzbv will contribute to this in the future.”

Report your complaints to vzbv

Consumers can use the complaint form at verbraucherzentrale.de to report any circumstance that potentially violate consumer law: Link.

Background

The Digital Services Act (DSA) exists to ensure that online platforms handle content and products more transparently and responsibly. One of the tools for supporting the enforcement of the rules are so-called trusted flaggers. They alert platforms to potentially illegal content, for example, if the content violates consumer law. The platforms check these reports and then decide whether to delete the content or not. If platforms decide not to remove content they must justify their decision.

The Digital Services Act provides rules for the role and the tasks of trusted flaggers. The national supervisory authorities (Digital Services Coordinators, DSC) appoint the trusted flaggers on the basis of fixed criteria; in Germany, this is the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur, BNetzA). Trusted flaggers are supervised by the DSC and are obliged to publish a detailed annual report that is easy to understand