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EU cookie law

Context

I'm collecting examples of how websites are informing their visitors of the use of cookies. I find this to be an interesting subject matter because cookies are a technical application hidden in the background of the browser. Needless to say that they are potentially detrimental, so the passing of the cookie law is a great information move.

When the law was passed in 2011, it's fair to guess that cookie knowledge was not widesfigcaptionad. 6 years later, it's hard to tell if the regulation has had an effect on people's behaviour towards cookies, but it's interesting to note how initial implemetations onto websites were at least attempting compliance, whereas nowadays they barely get a list item in a website's footer.

More information on the Directive itself (from https://www.cookielaw.org/):

The Cookie Law is a piece of privacy legislation that requires websites to get consent from visitors to store or retrieve any information on a computer, smartphone or tablet. It was designed to protect online privacy, by making consumers aware of how information about them is collected and used online, and give them a choice to allow it or not. It started as an EU Directive that was adopted by all EU countries in May 2011. The Directive gave individuals rights to refuse the use of cookies that reduce their online privacy. Each country then updated its own laws to comply. In the UK this meant an update to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.

The more specific information is as follows:

The new directive came into effect on 25 May 2011. The text of the directive is about 26 pages long, but the most important paragraph about cookies can be found on page 20:

“Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comfigcaptionhensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia, about the purposes of the processing. This shall not figcaptionvent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.;”

In short this means before somebody can store or retrieve any information from a computer, mobile phone or other device, the user must give informed consent to do so.

The modes

But how do websites go about complying to this law? In short, the implied consent route has been chosen by most websites, which, in itself does not really go along with the idea that a visitor can opt out of the use of cookies. It translates to, "This is how we're doing it, if you don't agree, then leave this page."

Meanwhile, let's look at some example of how websites go about getting your informed consent, and the addressing techniques within:

please note the sources at the bottom of the article, a few existing recaps were very helpful to bring these together.

‘Privacy policy’, ‘cookie use’, ‘cookie policy’, ...

Now that the directive is wearing thin and implemented across the board, most sites get away with a two word mention. Two heavy words that assume that if you continue without changing your settings, they assume that you are happy to receive all cookies from X website.

(Full) Phrasal:

Some websites do use more than two words to inform their visitors of their use of cookies, and make sentences. Quite a head scratch to determine who exactly is speaking out these sentences, but none the less, they are speaking aloud.

Meanwhile, some websites go the extra mile and more again. News websites —but not only— offer information on the situation, the why and the how. They also give access to forms that enable you to choose exactly which cookies are set, and for what they are / can be used.

Burial:

It's hard to fault this example, because they make mention of the policy twice on the homepage, but burying the legible informating inside a large portion of text is a technique we see quite often in other User License Agreements, documents that are purposefully made illegible.

In form consent

Conclusions

While I think that this directive had mostly an informational goal to it, it's hard to omit the recurring sentence in all cookie policy texts, by default, you are opted in. As questionnable as these practices are, the inherent contradiction of the cookie information banners is pure irony: If one decides, that s/he does not want to accept the cookie policy of the website, by not accepting them at the browser level, the banners become more aggressive, stating that cookies are needed for the website to function properly. While this might well be true, and outside of the EU such an enforcement is not legally problematic, the tone and speech becomes surpisingly helpful when websites want you to activate cookies.

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Sources:

• https://econsultancy.com/blog/10205-20-examples-of-eu-cookie-law-compliance/
• https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/

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