ICO

The war on cookies is over, or at least the rhetoric has been turned down a notch. Back in June when the ICO, who enforce the Data Protection Act, implemented the strictest interpretation of the law, their website traffic dropped 90%.

We dubbed it Cookiepocalypse. However, it looks like the war on cookies has just ended, or at least the ground offensive is over. On 31 Jan, they updated their website with the softer interpretation of the law which assumes implied consent.

Update: Cookiepocalypse is over (possibly). The ICO have updated their advice, suggesting implied consent is sufficient for users. Read more

This one is going to run and run. I'm predicting that anyone in digital is going to be an expert in cookies by the end of the Summer. And not the nice baked versions either, sadly.

Imagine a 90% drop in website visitors that are willing to accept a cookie from your website. be tracked through your analytics tool? Or your advertising targeting? Or your third party shopping basket? Ouch.

That's what happened with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) implemented the new law with existing technology, over 90% of site visitors declined to accept a Google Analytics cookie, thereby disappearing from their analytics.

Whilst the powers-that-be have allowed a year for industry to figure out a way to implement the new 'daft by European standards' cookie law, its impact is dramatic, as illustrated by the graphs obtained by leading web analytics expert, Vicky Brock (@brockyvick), under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

UPDATE: Vicky has kindly shared the raw data from the FOI request if anyone fancies a spot of number-crunching.

Last week, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) published guidance on changes to the laws on using cookies that will affect tens of thousands of business owners.

The new law applies to all EU websites and requires website owners to get a user's consent before cookies are saved onto a device. First,  bit of background...