ICO changes cookie/privacy implementation on own site

Move to "implied consent" useful for informing other site cookie policy decisions?

Value/Importance: [rating=4] (For UK marketers)

Recommended link: ICO announcement

Through 2011 and 2012 we kept marketers informed on how they should respond to new European privacy legislation and how it relates to the UK in particular. In our last post on the topic in 2012 we summarised the action the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is taking on enforcement now the law is in force (from May 2012). There is a clear shift on previous announcements from “mandatory opt-in” to “informed consent” (to simplify).

If you’ve been following the cookie privacy developments to inform what you do on your site or for clients, then the latest announcement is very interesting. It’s from the ICO themselves explaining how they are changing their message such that they can now gain analytics insight from users.

Here's the 'before and after' for the ICO site. I certainly think the informed consent with the fixed cookie privacy message bar at the bottom of the browser is a big improvement and better than many of the other informed consent approaches on other sites where there is a large distracting message at the top of the page or worse a pop-up.

Before: May 2011 to January 31st 2013

After - February 1st 2013

You may remember this Freedom of Information request from Vicky Brock that showed the impact their mandatory opt-in for analytics data to be collected (at the top of the screen - see screen grab below) had adversely affected their data collected:

It’s good to see flexibility in the ICOs implementation and that they realise the value of analytics. We will take a look at the new implementation when it’s complete at the end of the month.

The key features of the change which could serve as a model for other sites is:

• Cookies set on arrival to the site.
• New cookies banner displayed. Banner explains that the website uses cookies and that cookies have been set, tells users they can change their cookie settings (via a new cookies page), or continue to use the site.
• New ‘Cookies’ page (separate from our Privacy notice, but linked to and from it) to increase prominence of the information.
• Users given clear, detailed information about the cookies set and how to manage them, and new buttons allowing users to delete or allow non-essential cookies.