Christmas Cookies : are you up-to-date and compliant?

Organisations who have not received a notice would be well advised to take steps now to ensure your websites are compliant – before the ICO’s investigatory spotlight turns on your sector!

To help, here is a quick recap on the requirements for cookies.

As per the ICO guidelines, you must be transparent with your use of cookies:

1. It must be as easy to opt out as it is to opt in.
2. Do not rely on browser settings: you should not assume that every visitor can configure their browser settings to correctly reflect their preferences in relation to the setting of cookies.
3. Consent must be separate from other matters and cannot be bundled into terms and conditions or privacy notices.
4. You should obtain consent by giving the user specific separate information about what they are being asked to agree to and providing them with a way to accept by means of a positive action to opt-in.
5. Message boxes such as banners, pop-ups, message bars, header bars or similar techniques are one option for you to achieve compliance. However, you need to consider their implementation carefully, particularly in respect of the user experience. For example, a message box designed for display on a desk- or laptop may be hard for the user to read or interact with when using a mobile device, meaning that the consent could be invalid.
6. Electronic consent requests must not be unnecessarily disruptive: consider how you go about providing clear and comprehensive information without confusing users or disrupting their experience.
7. Long lists of checkboxes might seem like a way to make your consent mechanism appropriately granular, but this approach carries different risks in that your users may simply not interact with the mechanism or may not understand the information you’re providing. Again, this makes the consent invalid.
8. Follow the guidance on the ICO website: How do we comply with the cookie rules? | ICO

For more information – we have been invited to co-author an article with specialists in marketing data analytics, to provide more detailed guidance on the technical and legal issues around the use of cookies. Look out for our article in the New Year: 2024 Cookie Consent Compliance: Mastering the Dos and Don’ts.