Saturday, August 11, 2012

Ecommerce sites - Beware of cookies 3rd Party - Google Analytics users are in breach of privacy?


To be successful, ecommerce sites need information about site visitors.

Which sites are the best referrer? Which search engine produces the most traffic? For how long visitors remain on site, what is their path through the site and which pages they leave?

A method of collecting this information is often defined as using 3rd party cookies. If you use third party cookies, you are aware of concerns about privacy, and will be responsible for an infringement on privacy?

What is a "Cookie" Anyway?

A cookie is a data message to a Web browser by a web server. The browser stores the message in a text file called cookie.txt. The message is sent to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

The information generated by the cookie helps the Web server track such things as user preferences and data that the user may submit while browsing the site. For example, a cookie can contain information about the purchases that the user (if the Web site is an online e-commerce), or the cookie can "remember" your contact information so that you do not have to re -type on the future site visits.

1st Party and 3rd Party Cookies Characterized

There is one important difference between the 1 st party and 3rd party cookies. If you use cookies 1 st party, have moved to a site visitor, the data generated and remain with your site. On the other hand, if you hire an independent company (such as Google with its Google Analytics) to pass the cookie, the cookie is called 3rd party cookies.

Privacy Concerns with 3rd Party Cookies

Privacy concerns stem from the fact that the data generated with the 3rd party cookie resides on the servers of the party 3 --- not your server. The fact that we do not control these sites of 3 ° and their use of these data has raised concerns among many users. For example, users have wondered whether these 3rd party sites to aggregate data across many sites and e-commerce trends in relation to the media, or 3rd party sites use the data for purposes of cross-site profiling and targeting of ads.

And what is your legal obligation to disclose the use of 3rd party cookies? In the EU, it is illegal to pass cookies without informing users that they are, what we are accustomed to, and how they can be avoided, and it is thought that the failure to communicate adequately details the use of 3rd party cookie is a violation of Community law.

In the U.S., there is a debate underway about the same questions and the answers are less certain.

Conclusion

We recommend that if you use third party cookies, you clearly disclose in your privacy policy of the distinction between 3 and 1 party cookies and how they are used and avoided.

Be careful, though, change your privacy policy as changes can not be retroactively for data collected with cookies 3rd party before the change .......

No comments:

Post a Comment