(Pocket-Lint) – The UK Department of Culture, Media and Sports outlines the changes it wants to make under the proposed Data Reform Bill – and has cookies in mind.
Since the EU complied with its GDPR rules in 2018, visiting a new website often requires you to accept cookies. For those who don’t know, cookies are data snippets that let a website remember that someone has visited before.
GDPR’s goal was to protect users with control over that data, and the result was a pop-up every time you visited a new website, it was basically an opt-in system.
The Data Reform Bill seeks to get rid of these pop-ups, but it does not appear that the UK government is simply abolishing data protection: instead, it suggests that there should be an “opt-out model” that can be operated by the browser, so every time a box Instead of clicking, the website you are visiting already knows the answer
This “opt-out model”, however, may be the default for users to accept cookies and it is no coincidence that elsewhere, the goal of the Data Reform Bill is to “use the power of data”.
The purpose is to allow Internet users to have control over their data, but to provide a smooth route while browsing, free from pop-ups or banners.
Of course, if the browser is going to provide these controls, the UK needs to engage with the developers of those browsers to make sure there is a functioning system.
“Before legal changes begin, the government will work with industry and regulators to ensure the technology is effective and readily available so that people can set their online cookie preferences to opt out automatically.”
The elephant of the house is that it can never work and in 2018 many websites change to comply with the EU’s GDPR requirements, no additional work can happen to support the UK’s will.
The title desire to remove cookies will certainly be interesting, but the key is to ensure that the user maintains data control.
Written by Chris Hall.
