Saturday 6 April 2013

British cookie compliance: how good is this!

We Brits really have done a brilliant job in ensuring that we are all following the cookie rules.

How do I know?

Well, I’ve taken a quick squint at the ICO’s casework log. During the first nine months of the current financial year, the ICO’s mighty Privacy & Electronic Communications casework team dealt with just three cases. Yes, three

This compares with 1,175 cases involving automated phone calls, 934 cases involving live phone calls, 873 email and 51 fax cases. Oh, and a case involving telephone directories, too.

This must be a cause for celebration.

We should all feel free to take the rest of the day off.

Message to the European Commission:  You may get tired of us occupying the awkward corner, but when we set our mind to it, we can be mightily impressive at implementing some of the rules!

Footnote:
These statistics do not quite tally with statistics reported elsewhere on the ICO’s website, where a cookie enforcement activity report notes that “Between 25 May and 21 November 2012 we received 550 reports. In the same period, individuals used our website to report over 53,000 concerns about unwanted marketing communications.” There is obviously difference between a “report from an individual” and a decision to open a “case”. But whatever the true figures are, the message is the same – which is that complainants are evidently much more concerned at issues other than cookies.

Sources:

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