Cookie Question

11 hours ago, sallygregg said:

I have a client who does not wish to enable [analytics] cookies. What do you tell clients?

There are a few things worth mentioning but first I should say that cookie laws* are a legal minefield and as I'm not a lawyer, this is intended as a friendly discussion rather than legal advice. 🙂

From my experience, if you're building a website you should ensure that you have a cookie banner and it is configured to have Opt-in & Out options so visitors from the UK, Europe (or other territories that have strict privacy laws) can decline your site’s analytics cookies because in the eyes of the law they aren't strictly necessary.

When analytics cookies are off or have been rejected the new visitor count will be artificially inflated because the analytics won't be able to differentiate between a previous visitor and a new one.

You can ensure the opt-out option is available to visitors as follows (or by reading this guide😞

• Go to Settings > Cookies & Visitor Data.
• Check Enable Cookie Banner is toggled on.
• In the Cookie Banner Type section, ensure Opt-in & Out is selected (not Opt-in!)
• Click Save if you have made any changes.

If your client does not want a cookie banner they should ensure analytics cookies are always disabled, by toggling on the Disable Squarespace Analytics Cookies option (see below) to always disable them.

In practice this is often almost the same as offering the reject option because 90%+ of visitors will click reject if it is a clear and available option.

*Some background notes
In the UK, there are several laws relevant to cookies, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) and the Data Protection Act (DPA). This can make it a challenge to understand! Our Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is there to improve the information rights practices of organisations by gathering and dealing with concerns raised by members of the public. They do their best to make sense of this for businesses and they explain that "cookies used for analytics purposes, eg to count the number of unique visits to a website aren't strictly necessary and would need consent". They also say "Enabling a non-essential cookie without the user taking a positive action before it is set on their device does not represent valid consent". That's why it is important to offer the opt-out.

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