I’m confused.
That’s not newsworthy, I know, as I pride myself on spending a chunk of my life confused. I tell myself that out of the confusion will come greater understanding. Maybe this will be one of those days.
I check a lot of non-U.S. web sites each day and I’ve been looking to see how they word their cookie notice following changes in EU law and the ICO’s new guidance. Some notices seem pretty clear, like the ones from the Information Commissioner’s Office and the one from Out-Law.com, both depicted below:
But some – usually those taking the “implied consent” approach – confuse me. Consider this notice from The Guardian:
So what does that mean? To even find out what they do with cookies, I have to click on the link, but by doing that, I am continuing to browse their site. So did I just give them consent to put cookies on my server so I could find out whether I want to give them consent? Shouldn’t there be some “We won’t put cookies on your server just because you follow this one link” exemption?
Check out BT’s site (www.bt.com). They use a good layered approach, with a pop up window presented when you first visit, and then a link at the bottom of each page showing which types of cookies are currently enabled + a widget that explains what each type of cookie does, and allows you to ‘turn off’ certain types of cookies.
Wow… that’s actually pretty impressive. Thanks for pointing it out.