Month: May 2011

The deadline for EU member states to implement the new cookie law is today! And not many member states are ready to eat their cookies yet! To date, Denmark and Estonia are the only states to have implemented the amended EU Privacy and Communications Directive, which gives Internet users more control of their data and requires any company with EU customers to comply. This requirement is a provision in an amendment to the E.U.’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, which was adopted in 2009.

One claimed reason for the sluggish implementation of the directive is confusion around its intended purpose, as well as how best to implement it without destroying the businesses that rely on cookie placement to generate revenue, such as online advertising networks. The most visible change is the introduction of an “explicit consent” requirement. Read more at ClickZ.

So how can this be implemented? On a technical level it’s messy because it needs to be added on. It is not a built in privacy functionality so this will result in significant inconvenience for web-users as websites seek explicit consent for cookie placement through pop-ups and other awkward mechanisms. If the privacy function for cookies…. or maybe not cookies…. were an integral function of our PC and of any web-app we happen to be interacting with, perhaps it would be more of a loyalty card function (maybe even shaking hands, representing mutual consent)…used in the physical world for relationship marketing. The customer presents a card each time the approach the checkout. Hence in exchange for sharing personal information the customer should receive certain benefits, and clearly transparency in what is being collected…

Me just brainstorming to myself a little here 🙂

I’ve been posting about this before, the thing on “cookie consent” in the new EU privacy law. Well now there have been some guidelines published by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Simply advice is as follows:

We advise you to now take the following steps:
1. Check what type of cookies and similar technologies you use
and how you use them.
2. Assess how intrusive your use of cookies is.
3. Decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your
circumstances.

The main difference in behaviour is often those using cookies to collect your behaviour data used to by default give you the option to opt-out, however now you must consent, i.e. opt-in. This is now aligned to the general collection of personal data in the EU.