Here Comes The Cookie Monster:
Making sense of the EU Data Protection Legal Framework
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IntroductionToday, nobody should need telling that privacy is a big deal. No matter that thousands of people regularly share the deepest secrets of their souls (and the accompanying pictures) with 'friends' on Facebook, the merest sniff that a company is abusing users' privacy and all hell breaks loose. (We saw this not so long ago with Facebook itself.)
For those of us involved in direct digital marketing, the rules around double opt-in and personally identifiable information (PII) are now pretty clear and commonplace. There are some exceptions at a country level – Germany being a prime example of where the rules on informed consent are more stringent. But overall we understand that in order to market to an individual, they must give their permission to be marketed to. They might do this directly or via an agreement with a third party such as a publisher. But as long as they do and we give them the opportunity to unsubscribe, everything is fine.
Of course, even from a purely business viewpoint, this makes perfect sense. As the UK's information commissioner, Christopher Graham puts it, "Get privacy right and you retain the trust and confidence of your customers and users; mislead consumers or collect information you don't need and you are likely to diminish customer trust and face enforcement action."
It's all a matter of trust.
That was then this is now?While things are relatively simple for outbound email-based communications, they're about to get a lot more complicated for everything else.
The issue, in a word, is cookies. Specifically, the use of cookies to track people as they move from site to site. This is becoming even more of an issue with the growth in retargeting technologies that allow us to serve buyers with relevant messages based upon their previous behaviour.
The view of the regulators is that, in terms of privacy, using a cookie on a customer's PC to track them is no different than using their email address to market to them. As such, they should know that this is happening and, crucially, give their explicit consent. Importantly, it is no longer enough to bury information about your use of cookies in your site's privacy policy. This has profound implications for today's marketers.
In this Insight article, we'll take a look at what the new regulations say and what they might mean for your marketing.
Just before we start, one thing we should make clear – we are not lawyers. This is our understanding of the situation (informed by our partners at Eloqua, advice from the Information Commissioner's Office and our association with the Internet Advertising Bureau). You should, as a matter of course, take legal counsel before acting on anything you read here. We cannot take responsibility for the legality of your campaigns.
Right, now that we've got our own lawyers off our back, on with the show...
Download Here Comes The Cookie Monster (pdf, 1.71 Mb)