Cookies. Read on.
Who are we kidding? You shan’t read this. Nobody will. But in order to appear cognisant, well intentioned and disposed to full disclosure, this blog post is here to point at should any person or body jab a stick in our spokes.
Which is pretty much what a new EU law coming into play on the 26th of May 2011 could do if interpreted too literally – break the spinning wheels of European ecommerce, that is.
‘Interpretation’ is pretty much the name of the game for now. Actually, ‘ignoring’ is closer to the mark. Governments across Europe are saying, errmm, yes, ermmm it IS law, but , ermmm, we can’t tell you what you have to do in order to not fall foul of the law and, ermm, until we can tell you, there won’t be any punitive action.
The intentions are fine and correct. Lots of people do not like to be profiled, to have their tastes and interests cross-referenced in order that they may be targeted by behavioural advertising. Of course they don’t, and you can read here what the advertising industry has to say about the subject, along with showing you ways of opting out of targeting by companies that may or may not be involved in such practices.
But that’s not what the bulk of us use cookies for. Cookies – small text files that are written (usually only temporarily) to your computer as you use a website – are essential to most if not all ecommerce sites. They’re the virtual barcode scanners that register and remember everything that you’ve added to your cart come checkout time. Our site would not work without them. Neither would most shopping sites. To be fair, the official documentation appears to recognise this (you can view the English language PDF here, the Italian one here), but even so it’s all very vague and will be ignored by pretty much everyone until definitions tighten up and procedures are defined.
The regulators want all cookies to be explicitly accepted by a user. Every time a browser is asked to accept a cookie, the EU wants the browser to ask you if you will in turn accept it. This is obviously lunacy, unless you fancy clicking ‘Yes’ or ‘I accept’ dozens of times on every website you visit. This is not exaggerating this issue – this is exacly what would happen if the regulations were applied today – permission-requesting-pop-up-windows-ad-infinitum. Nobody is going to enforce this, nobody will accept it. Some laughable suggestions have it that you, the user, would prefer scrolling text banners atop every page to let you know each time a cookie is incoming.
We do not want to belittle the concept of invasive marketing. We want to belittle these regulations as they stand. If we were to accept them, then tomorrow would see us taking out an injunction against the staff at the local bar for remembering our names and tying that sensitive information to our favourite choices of coffee.
For now, we’ve revisited and updated our privacy policy, where we have let you know about all the cookies you’re likely to come across as you use our site, what they’re used for, and what their half-lifes are. But there’s nothing pernicious – everything we use cookies for is anonymous, as is the usage of third party cookies, not that there are many of them. There is no behavioural advertising on this site. No external adverts at all, for that matter.
We will comply with all European privacy regulations. Just as soon as we know what they are and how we’re required to respect them.
tickitaly.com, 10th May 2011