Collecting fine-grained programming process data may require students’ informed consent in order to comply with ethical and legal regulations. Previous studies suggest that such consent is not always given in the context of graded introductory programming courses due to students’ concerns about being accused of plagiarism. Little is known about the students’ willingness to give consent in these contexts and what strategies can be used to increase consent. In this work, we propose a novel strategy that combines data encryption with a data trustee to address a conflict of interest that arises when instructors are involved in research. Trustee-based encryption prevents instructors and researchers from accessing collected data until students have been graded while ensuring that data can be recovered if students drop out of the course. We present initial evidence that student councils are suitable candidates to serve as data trustees in higher education. To determine the impact of our strategy on consent, we conducted two experiments with computer science students enrolled in graded introductory programming courses at a German university. While we were unable to find evidence for increased willingness to consent, we found evidence that trustee-based encryption reduces signs of anxiety about the misuse of collected data. As such, our strategy can be considered beneficial for obtaining informed consent. In contexts where such consent is not required, trustee-based encryption could prevent missing or biased data caused by students who attempt to bypass data collection.