UK-based Consent Management Service calls for a rethink of online privacy

Privacy & Cookies CEO advocates 3 step approach to greater overall compliance to benefit users and website owners alike

LONDON, UK; 5 March 2020 – In the wake of a damning study on internet privacy released in August 2019 by MIT, UCL and Aarhus University, a UK-based company, Privacy & Cookies (P&C), is advising businesses to completely rethink the way they are managing their user’s privacy whilst browsing online.

The paper entitled, “Dark Patterns after the GDPR: Scraping Consent Pop-ups and Demonstrating their Influence,” estimated that only 11.8% of the top 10,000 websites in the UK are currently compliant, with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European privacy law, despite all deploying one of the 5 leading CMP solutions (by market share) on their websites. The report concluded, “11.8% is an extraordinarily low number for seemingly market-leading CMP vendors”.

Years of experience and technology development of automated compliance software has led P&C to develop the first solution that meets current ICO and DPA regulatory requirements. It’s a proven, compliance-led Consent Management Platform that is focused on gaining visitor trust and earning consent.

“We believe that user’s privacy has been abused for too long,” says P&C CEO, Lawrence Shaw, “The ICO, UK (DPA) Data Protection Authority, among others, has now laid down very specific rules as to what is deemed acceptable and this means the vast majority of websites will need to address their use of cookies and bring their sites into line. Our advantage is our service is built and ready to meet this requirement. Our automation removes inconsistency and offers secure, efficient, fully scalable deployment.”

Shaw advocates a three-step approach to greater compliance for website owners.

1: Don’t assume compliance
Website owners should not be setting non-essential cookies before visitors have consented. Instead, website owners should be confirming the purpose of each ‘essential’ cookie and ensuring that they meet the regulators definition of an ‘essential’ cookie. No further cookies should be set until consent has been earned.

2: Review the user-experience
Website owners should be aiming for consistency across sites so that visitors don’t get confused. At the same time, they shouldn’t expect visitors to wait while a consent management system opts out of cookies before offering the content or have to be redirected to different pages for more information. And, most importantly, they shouldn’t ask the user for consent and preferences, only to ignore them.

3: Use the anonymous cookies checker
Shaw suggests assessing your website for the likely level of privacy risk using the Cookies Checker at www.rethinkingprivacy.com. This free tool allows users to find out what cookies are actually being set by a website, ahead of visitors’ consent being gained and returns results in about 90 seconds.

“A new dawn is upon us, one ensuring transparency underpinning trust,” says Shaw, “We need to rethink privacy, not only because the regulation has been clarified and enforcement has begun, but because it’s time to appreciate the value of trust and earn consent.”

For further information or PR enquiries please contact:

Privacy & Cookies

randrews@rethinkingprivacy.com
www.rethinkingprivacy.com
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tel:  07771 848 294