Swedish Goverment Introduces Cookie Opt-In Banner – there goes their Google Analytics data…

The Swedish Government has introduced a banner on their website asking visitors to explicitly accept having cookies placed on their website (click on the image to make it larger).

It sure ain’t pretty, and will probably have the same catastrophic effect on the Google Analytics data they collect that the ICO, in the UK, experienced when they introduced something similar. Will the last analyst left in the building please turn the lights off when they leave….

Update: And here’s something similar from Uppsala kommun:

and here’s another Swedish site bearing a similar banner (I’ve chosen the English version here) msb.se:

 

 

 

 

 

The Cookie Law in Sweden – Self regulation committee started by the IAB

The Swedish arm of the European Trade Association of the Digital and Interactive Marketing Industry (IAB) has created a self regulating committee in response to the introduction of the new Swedish law ‘Better Rules for Electronic Communication‘.

This law is a response to the recent EU directive which places tough standards on the use of cookies and has serious implications for, for example, the effectiveness of  cookie based tools such as Google Analytics and the various forms of online advertising.

The self regulating committee has created a group with members including Adform, Eniro, Google, Microsoft, Specific Media, Trade Doubler, IAB – Sweden, Swedish Chamber of Commerce, RO, Sveriges Annonsörer, Sveriges Mediebyråer, TU, and Sveriges Marknadsförbund/Näringslivets delegation för Marknadsätt (NDM).

The project is lead by Henrik Nilsson, a lawyer, and I strongly recommend reading  through the presentation he made at the recent IAB conference in Stockholm a few weeks ago, made around the time the new Swedish law was voted in. It’s in Swedish – and gives a background to the cookie law and the self regulating project.

The objective of this project is to create a best practice for the use of cookies. The project aims to deliver a best practice guide in July this year. Hopefully we’ll be seeing updates on the IAB website, you can also follow their legal arm on twitter here.

I work in the Higher Education sector, which is in the not for profit category and is not so well represented in the IAB project- I hope this will change, and I’m happy to say they seem very receptive to getting in other opinions and input. My concern is that limiting the use of cookie based analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, will detrimentally effect the ability  for organisations, such as the university I work for, to effectively manage and optimise their digital marketing activities.

To get a quick overview of the fallout from the EU law (allbeit from a mostly UK perspective) use the search ‘EU cookie‘ in twitter. I recommend checking out Brian Clifton‘s post on the impact of this new directive on the use of Google Analytics and this post, by Paul Hatcher, for a good calm overview – though there is a plethora of posts on this subject out there now.

Cookie Killer – New EU Directive on Cookies and Privacy – New Swedish Law

New privacy laws could impact on our ability to gather user data, potentially restricting the use of tools like Google Analytics.

The New EU Law

The EU will soon be enforcing a new directive which directly addresses the way cookies can be used – it’s a development of the EU’s ePrivacy directive. How will it affect your website? Well, no one seems to be totally clear but there’s certainly a ton of, what seems to be, well founded gloom.
Essentially the law requires website owners to get consent from website visitors to record and store information about them :

“site owners need to get an explicit opt-in in order to deploy practically any cookie” – Wired

Photo from Jim Linwood - Creative Commons Licence - http://bit.ly/j7haTF

Sweden’s New Law ‘Bättre Regler för Elektroniska Kommunikationer’ – A response to the EU law

In a few day’s time the Swedish Government will be voting on a new law ‘Bättre regler för elektroniska kommunikationer’ which will enforce the EU law.

Using my second language with a legal document is not a happy combination, but cookies are under the spotlight in this new law. For example, page 317 of the law says:

“Abonnenten eller användaren ska inte längre bara ges tillfälle att hindra lagring eller åtkomst, utan måste lämna sitt samtycke till åtgärden”

This sounds like the opt-in which the Wired Article, and several other commentators have described (Techcrunch have come out of the corner fighting on this one ‘Stupid EU Law‘). However, the Swedish law just does not seem clear enough.

“Vissa menar att samtycket måste inhämtas innan man besöker själva hemsidan, det vill säga i praktiken kommer man till en ”för-sida” där informationen om cookies ges till den enskilda användare som får godkänna dessa för att sedan länkas vidare till själva hemsidan.”: Ny lag för Cookies – Mathias Berggren

The EU law states that cookie use is acceptable where it is absolutely mission critical, but opinions will no doubt vary on what is critical.

Google Analytics – Can we still use it?

My sector, and many others, rely on using 1^st party cookies to gather data on what our visitors do on our websites. This enables us to optimize the user experience – for a content rich website, like a university website, it’s a vital tool. This new law could very well prevent the use of Google Analytics, and thus leave a potential gap in our ability to understand how people use our websites.

There’s discussion about this on the Google Analytics forum.

Our search optimization efforts, measurement of YouTube success and use of adwords would, presumably, also be impacted. So, can we still use Google Analytics?  It would be nice to get some kind of  measured response from e-delagationen or Datainspketion (who have previously commented on the use of Google Analytics).

In the UK, the Information Commissioners Office’s guidelines do not include the use of cookies to gather statistical data as sufficiently mission critical to allow their use, without first getting consent.

A Final Word

Several commentators consider this law simply to be unworkable, as to police it would be extremely difficult. Germany has banned Google Analytics, but do German sites continue to use it? It would be interesting to find out how such a ban actually works in practice.  This law could be a massive blow to our ability to manage websites, a blanket  enforcement of ‘do not track’ (or ‘do not track without consent’) could result in some bizarre user experiences with opt in messages plastering websites. Alternatives do exist when it comes to data collection, it’s true, and making sure we only collect aggregate data could defuse privacy issues at a stroke.

Let’s see where this lands – Don’t Panic.

I’ll be at the Google Analytics conference in Stockholm tomorrow, no doubt more light will be shed on this subject there.

Please feel free to leave comments on the new law, and particularly the Swedish law – be nice to get a lawyers input on this.