Il cookie pledge is a bill put forward by European Commission which aims to rethink the approach and the loading banners and pop-ups his Internet site.
The goal of the cookie pledge is make users aware of the profiling policies in place ed eliminate so-called cookie fatigue: the difficulty of understanding that leads thousands of people to accept the cookie without an adequate level of awareness.
What are the problems with cookies and profiling
When it comes to the Internet, i cookie they have nothing to do with biscuits. It is in fact about text file who come installed by the user when the user accesses a site.
Cookies allow servers to obtain useful information from a profiling perspective: for example the kind of activity that the user performs on a web page. Or maybe the residence time within the page in question.
The European legislation on the management of cookies falls within the so-called GDPR: il General Data Protection Regulationwhich has as its primary objective the protection of privacy online.
By law cookies must be accepted by the user: which is why sites viewed for the first time have some banner or gods pop-up dedicated.
In principle the user should read the texts inside the banners and choose whether or not to accept the cookie policy (and consequently its profiling). But exist various critical issues to keep in mind.
Il first problem is that i texts in question are often unclear. Il second is that many sites open banners and pop-ups dedicated to cookies every time which is loaded one new page.
The result is that many users do click or tap on the Accept button simply to proceed with navigation and without having real knowledge than what they accepted.
What does the first draft of the cookie pledge propose
The difficulties described in the previous paragraphs are known as cookie fatigue; the cookie pledge aims to overcome cookie fatigue by giving the user more understanding tools and orientation with the final objective of protecting the privacy online of those who sail.
Il first point fundamental part of the proposal revolves around the need to simplify banner and pop-up textseliminating all information that is not strictly necessary.
The cookie pledge also wants counteract an expanding trend in recent years. In fact, many sites now call the user to one choice between two paths: on the one hand theacceptance of the cookie policyon the other side signing up for a paid subscription to the site or web page in question.
The proposal aims to eliminate this dichotomy and to make a third way mandatory navigation: which does not involve the forced acceptance of profiling and which perhaps offers advertisements that are not too invasive.
One last aspect to take into consideration: the cookie pledge would prevent servers to propose it same banner more than once every 365 days.
A request already present in Digital Markets Act: the digital markets regulation, valid throughout theEuropean Union starting from 2023.