GDPR and Cookies

So it kind of became hot that ALL websites in the EU must throw a pop-up in Mrs Parker’s face to inform her that my (and everyone else’s) website use cookies.

And poor Mrs Parker doesn’t understand a word of what this is about cookies. It is required by law that website owners write it, so EVERYONE can understand it, but it is not easy to talk about complicated cookies so that everyone, from top to bottom, in society knows what is going on. To her, it is just one more annoying pop-up.

It’s not just on my website, Mrs Parker has to accept the use of cookies. No, she has to repeat the same procedure on the next website she visits. And the next. And the next. And so on forever…

And no matter how often Mrs Parker clicks OK on those cookies, she doesn’t learn what it is. I think it’s fascinating that Juncker and his drunk social mates are sitting in the EU’s canteen after hours, pulling an insane – YES – INSANE idea out of random whiskey bottles, that is going to harass EVERYONE who uses the Internet. Harass you so much that you pull out the nose hairs in desperation that these NOT elected pampers can foster ideas that don’t even measure up to the average IQ in a random psychiatric ward!

What sensitive information are we talking about?

The kind of data we need to remember on our webshops are Names, Home addresses, E-mails, Identification card numbers (social security, passport, driving licence), Location data (geolocation from a phone), IP addresses, Search and browser history, Health-related data, Biometric data, Ethnic information, Political convictions, Religious beliefs and Sexual orientation.

These data are stored in cookies and that has become a huge problem.

Types of Cookies

We have four main types of cookies:

1. Necessary Cookies – also called Session Cookies. Without these cookies, your website wouldn’t work. Your website needs to remember certain information when a user is going from one page to another. These cookies are deleted shortly after the user leaves the website. We don’t have to get user consent for these cookies.
   
2. Preference Cookies – your website needs to remember what the user clicked in order to be able to go back and do basic navigation, remember language and currency settings.
   
3. Statistic Cookies – We are talking plugins here. Including Google Analytics. Plugins that provide statistics about the user need user consent.
   
4. Marketing Cookies – come from ads on your site – if you have any. Google AdSense is one of them.

Full GDPR cookie compliance means:

1. You need to know every single cookie on your website
2. You need to inform your users which cookies, their purpose, their duration and where they come from.
3. You need to enable users to withdraw their consent.
4. You need to document all of this securely.
5. You need to ask for new consent every 12 months.
6. You need to offer your users special consent where they can accept some cookies and not others.

Keeping track of this is horrible. Except we got plugins to do it for us. Unfortunately, this means a pop-up…

We also need to inform the user what information we collect from his visit, what we are doing with this information, how we store and protect this information, if we share it with others and who we share it with.

And we need to inform the user how he can delete or change his information.

Cookiebot is such a plugin (I don’t get affiliate money from them). Check if your website is Cookie Compliant.

EU Round up

Juncker and his happy semi-drunk cronies seem to have COMPLETELY overlooked the fact that if people run into too many pop-up signs, signup forms or other technical measures that delay or prevent visits and sales on the website, they will go elsewhere! They will find shops in countries that are easier to use.

And in this case, people are seeping AWAY from the EU to the US. Congratulations on the sale, Mr Junker. The EU is losing billions because you insist on bothering our customers!

It is very likely this idea started with the need to protect consumers, but quite simply the politicians don’t understand the problem enough to be able to create a solution that works outside the pink imaginative fogs of the EU palace! The day these slobbering idiots come up with just ONE GOOD REASON to throw pop-up cookie signs in people’s faces, I’ll probably put the damn pop-up up.

Until then, you can just forget about it. Hell will freeze over before it happens!