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Here are 15 tips to help keep your family safe online. Read More The invention of the Internet changed the definition of privacy, and made it necessary to enact new laws concerning electronic communications and security. Even cookies which customise a website (such as providing a greeting message) are deemed to be non essential. Essential cookies are generally those which enable an online checkout process to work properly - or if required for technical or security purposes. Failure to comply with the Cookie Law can lead to fines of up to £500,000.
edaa for Internet Users
Welcome to a guide to online behavioural advertising and online privacy.
On this website you'll find information about how behavioural advertising works, further information about cookies and the steps you can take to protect your privacy on the internet.
This website is written and funded by the internet advertising industry and supports a pan-European industry initiative to enhance transparency and control for online behavioural advertising. See here for further details.
edaa for Companies
The Programme is a self-regulatory initiative aimed to foster transparency in the online advertising environment for all, through delivering consumer-facing information and control solutions with regard to how data is used for interest based advertising. These solutions are self-regulatory in nature and correspond to industry best practice. They do not provide for or infer legal compliance (including with GDPR) which businesses themselves are responsible for, and should not be seen as such, though many companies may choose to adopt these self-regulatory tools as part of a broader ecology of statutory and self-regulatory solutions. The cross-industry self-regulatory initiative was developed by leading European bodies to introduce pan-European standards to enhance transparency and user control over data used for interest based advertising. This type of advertising increasingly helps to support the cost of providing content free at the point of access to consumers, and a range of services and applications that internet users can enjoy at little or no cost. The self-regulatory initiative is based upon a set of European Industry Self-Regulatory Principles for Data Driven Advertising and EASA’s BPR on OBA.
Cookies are an important tool that can give businesses a great deal of insight into their users’ online activity. Despite their importance, the regulations governing cookies are split between the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive.
Cookies are small text files that websites place on your device as you are browsing. They are processed and stored by your web browser. In and of themselves, cookies are harmless and serve crucial functions for websites. Cookies can also generally be easily viewed and deleted.
However, cookies can store a wealth of data, enough to potentially identify you without your consent. Cookies are the primary tool that advertisers use to track your online activity so that they can target you with highly specific ads. Given the amount of data that cookies can contain, they can be considered personal data in certain circumstances and, therefore, subject to the GDPR.
Before analyzing what the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive have to say about cookies, it is essential to have a basic understanding of the different types of cookies.
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Types of Cookies
In general, there are three different ways to classify cookies: what purpose they serve, how long they endure, and their provenance.
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Duration
- Session cookies – These cookies are temporary and expire once you close your browser (or once your session ends).
- Persistent cookies — This category encompasses all cookies that remain on your hard drive until you erase them or your browser does, depending on the cookie’s expiration date. All persistent cookies have an expiration date written into their code, but their duration can vary. According to the ePrivacy Directive, they should not last longer than 12 months, but in practice, they could remain on your device much longer if you do not take action.
Provenance
- First-party cookies -- As the name implies, first-party cookies are put on your device directly by the website you are visiting.
- Third-party cookies — These are the cookies that are placed on your device, not by the website you are visiting, but by a third party like an advertiser or an analytic system.
Purpose
- Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.
- Preferences cookies — Also known as “functionality cookies,” these cookies allow a website to remember choices you have made in the past, like what language you prefer, what region you would like weather reports for, or what your user name and password are so you can automatically log in.
- Statistics cookies — Also known as “performance cookies,” these cookies collect information about how you use a website, like which pages you visited and which links you clicked on. None of this information can be used to identify you. It is all aggregated and, therefore, anonymized. Their sole purpose is to improve website functions. This includes cookies from third-party analytics services as long as the cookies are for the exclusive use of the owner of the website visited.
- Marketing cookies — These cookies track your online activity to help advertisers deliver more relevant advertising or to limit how many times you see an ad. These cookies can share that information with other organizations or advertisers. These are persistent cookies and almost always of third-party provenance.
These are the main ways of classifying cookies, although there are cookies that will not fit neatly into these categories or may qualify for multiple categories. When people complain about the privacy risks presented by cookies, they are generally speaking about third-party, persistent, marketing cookies. Best ad blocker ios. These cookies can contain significant amounts of information about your online activity, preferences, and location. The chain of responsibility (who can access a cookies’ data) for a third-party cookie can get complicated as well, only heightening their potential for abuse. Perhaps because of this, the use of third-party cookies has been in decline since the passage of the GDPR
Cookies and the GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most comprehensive data protection legislation that has been passed by any governing body to this point. However, throughout its’ 88 pages, it only mentions cookies directly once, in Recital 30.
Cefipx v3 10. Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.
What these two lines are stating is that cookies, insofar as they are used to identify users, qualify as personal data and are therefore subject to the GDPR. Companies do have a right to process their users’ data as long as they receive consent or if they have a legitimate interest.
Cookies and ePrivacy Directive
Passed in the 2002 and amended in 2009, the ePrivacy Directive (EPD) has become known as the “cookie law” since its most notable effect was the proliferation of cookie consent pop-ups after it was passed. It supplements (and in some cases, overrides) the GDPR, addressing crucial aspects about the confidentiality of electronic communications and the tracking of Internet users more broadly.
Cookie compliance
To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must:
- Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies.
- Provide accurate and specific information about the data each cookie tracks and its purpose in plain language before consent is received.
- Document and store consent received from users.
- Allow users to access your service even if they refuse to allow the use of certain cookies
- Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.
ePrivacy Regulation
The EPD’s eventual replacement, the ePrivacy Regulation (EPR), will build upon the EPD and expand its definitions. (In the EU, a directive must be incorporated into national law by EU countries while a regulation becomes legally binding throughout the EU the date it comes into effect.)
The EPR was supposed to be passed in 2018 at the same time as the GDPR came into force. The EU obviously missed that goal, but there are drafts of the document online, and it is scheduled to be finalized sometime this year even though there is no still date for when it will be implemented. The EPR promises to address browser fingerprinting in ways that are similar to cookies, create more robust protections for metadata, and take into account new methods of communication, like WhatsApp.
The rules regulating cookies are still being set, and cookies themselves are continually evolving, which means maintaining a current cookie policy will be a continuous job. However, properly informing your users about the cookies your site is using and, when necessary, receiving their consent will keep your users happy and keep you GDPR-compliant.
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- Recital 30 - Online identifiers for profiling and identification
- What is considered personal data under the EU GDPR?
- A guide to GDPR data privacy requirements
- Art. 95 GDPR - Relationship with Directive 2002/58/EC
- Art. 94 GDPR - Repeal of Directive 95/46/EC
- Art. 34 GDPR - Communication of a personal data breach to the data subject