blog.

For those less techie-savvy amongst us browser cookies are not the chocolate chip variety but a small piece of text stored on your computer by your web browser. You probably know them best as those helpful little things that remember your address and phone number when you’re filling in a form. Cookies are hugely helpful for web based businesses it is a well known fact that at each stage of a signup process you lose customers. On average each domain has around 30 cookies.

The new EU privacy laws which come into effect on May 25th mean that web sites will have to obtain explicit consent from users to store this information. This means slapping large warnings about cookies on your site, which could scare away your customer making them think you’re a privacy nightmare. Some critics say that this will harm EU start ups pushing customers towards more US based sites that don’t have these privacy warnings.

The best advice for your business is to work out the best way to get consent to use cookies so you can continue to use them; some browsers are already working on ‘opt-in’ settings to meet the EU requirements. If you need advice on the best course of action we are happy to chat it through with you, just give us a buzz!

I am becoming far more aware of large brands trying to deliberately mislead their users into opting in to receive future communications.

An "opt-in" generally refers to a tick box which, if filled in by the user, indicates that they would like to be contacted by a particular form of communication. Unless the user ticks the box then the organisation cannot use their details for the form of marketing listed. This is in contrast with an "opt-out", where the default position is that the user will be contacted by that form of marketing, unless they tick the box to indicate that they would prefer not to be. The benefits of opt-out over opt-in are obvious, whereby the assumption is that the user wants to receive future communications, meaning more emails can be sent to more people.

People already receive enough SPAM or unsolicited emails so it should be best practice to make it as easy and clear as possible to the user that if they wish to opt-in to future communications then they can do so.

The All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (ApComms) said the internet advertising industry's self-regulation on behavioural advertising was inadequate, and that a law change was necessary.

"We do not believe that it is at all appropriate to consider the deployment of any type of behavioural advertising system without explicit, informed, 'opt-in' by everyone whose data is to be processed, and whose behaviour is to be monitored and whose interests are to be deduced," said ApComms in a report on its findings.

"We do not believe that 'opt-out', however commercially convenient, is the way that these systems should be run. To that extent, the Good Practice Principles promoted by the Internet Advertising Bureau are insufficient to protect people," it said.

"We recommend that the Government review the existing legislation applying to behavioural advertising, and bring forward new rules as needed, to ensure that these systems are only operated on an explicit, informed, opt-in basis,".

A technique I've also seen used is to include a combination of both opt-in and opt-out, one after the other. For example, when recently applying for a credit card from a leading brand they say:

Using the boxes below, please specify whether you want to hear about these offers, and, if so, how you want contact to be made.

Please DON'T CONTACT ME with offers from:
XXXX and XXXX companies:
by post ❑ by phone ❑

Please DO CONTACT ME with offers from:
XXXX and XXXX companies:
by email ❑ by text message ❑

Let’s hope that the existing legislation is reviewed and the rules will be made clear for businesses and consumers alike.