Web Cookies and Privacy: What They Are and What Comes Next
Learn how web cookies impact online privacy, why third-party cookies are disappearing, and what the future holds. Stay tuned for the follow-up in The Monthly April 2025.
Web Cookies and Confidentiality, who would have thought?
Hello,
We hear a lot about cookies on the web lately, don’t you think? Of course, we’re not talking about desserts, rather connection cookies which aim to remember the path taken by visitors to a website.
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, web cookies have transitioned from simple browsing aids to pivotal elements in data collection and user privacy debates. This article delves into the intricate world of cookies, shedding light on their evolution, the implications of phasing out third-party cookies, and the emerging data protection regulations.
Read more about:
Understanding the Evolution of Cookies: Explore how cookies, initially designed to enhance user experience, have become central to discussions on online privacy and data tracking.
Navigating a World Without Third-Party Cookies: Discover the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they adapt to a digital environment prioritizing user privacy over traditional tracking methods.
Preparing for New Data Protection Regulations: Stay informed about recent legislations affecting cookie usage and personal data collection, ensuring compliance and building trust with your audience.
MusicScore: this ticket was written at the beginning of 2022 while trying different recipes of gluten free cookies. Why not? So let’s listen while reading to this classic for the occasion: Brown Sugar from the Stones!
Cookies becoming annoying witnesses
Very effective in the 1990s, when a web page could take several seconds to display, the use of cookies has evolved to become a tool to help collect data in order to determine the behavior of visitors to a website, to the detriment of their privacy.
It was therefore inevitable that the use of cookies would be called to order! Let’s look at the history of this thing.
How cookies work
Basically, the small information file called a cookie was used in a communication for the first time in 1994. His primary mission was to be a witness to a user's recognition when he visits a website.
Compare everything to how your brain works when you visit a friend's new home. You learn the address, to recognize the place and the road to get there. The information you have learned will already be known at the time of your second visit.
The same applies to a user who visits a site for the first time. There is an exchange of information between the domain of the website and the visitor's system and this recognition information will be save in a file located on the visitor's computer to facilitate future visits.
Types of Cookies
Cookies are categorized based on their origin and lifespan. First-party cookies are set directly by the website you visit, enhancing user experience by remembering preferences and login details. Third-party cookies, however, are placed by external domains (like advertisers) and are primarily used for tracking purposes across different sites.
Emerging Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies: With major browsers phasing out third-party cookies, new solutions are emerging. Google's Privacy Sandbox aims to create web standards that protect privacy while still enabling targeted advertising. Other alternatives include contextual advertising, which targets ads based on the content of a webpage rather than user behavior, and first-party data strategies, where businesses rely on data they collect directly from their audiences.
Recent Data Protection Regulations: The introduction of regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe has significantly impacted how businesses handle cookies and personal data. These laws mandate greater transparency and user consent, reshaping digital marketing strategies worldwide.
Cookies in the 4.0
This explains why when you log in to an account on a website, you can stay logged in on your next visits, and even keep the items initially placed in your shopping cart.
In addition, sites allow a selection of a subscribed visitor's preferences to display personalized content for each member, and even targeted emails and alerts with adapted content. All this to the delight of communications and marketing agencies that hold key elements for guaranteed success.
Of course, it is possible to delete all cookies present on our systems (cache emptying), so that the process of a new exchange between a domain and a system will be done from 0 on the next visit.
In recent years, while acceptance of the use of cookies was set by default in the settings of most browser, standards now require that a visitor can accept, or not, the use of cookies for a visited domain. The parameter is now unchecked by default.
Do you see more and more pop up when visiting sites now? The warning movement of the use of cookies by website owners is well underway.
These are the kind of pop-up warning messages that appear nowadays to warn visitors.
Example of pop up:
Company X wishes to use cookies or other tracers and process your personal data, either navigation data, your account data and for the use of its services and geolocation to:
Obtain visit statistics as well as visitor behavior;
Obtain transfer and sharing statistics on social media;
Study the behavior of visitors in order to improve the experience;
Offer personalized content to each visitor;
Display advertisements according to each visitor's preferences and improve their performance;
Develop features;
Improve company X's products and services.
If you do not wish to share its information, please block access by clicking the appropriate box or by disabling cookies from the site in your browser settings.
User accountability
For us, regular Internet users, cookies do not represent many basic interests when it comes to an exchange between our system and the domain of a website that we like and visit regularly. Because we remember, a cookie is only a file that contains technical information, and not a program that is installed on our system that can create actions at our expense.
In addition, when it comes to a company we love and whose products we procure regularly, the fact that this merchant uses tracking information to know our favorite products and make us personalized suggestions in a subscription email that we have previously authorized, only maintains a good merchant/customer relationship.
The problem arises when there is a use of tracking data by a third party also placing a tracking cookie in our system (third-party cookies).
For example, a business that has placed an advertisement on the site of our favorite company, and that uses the data it will also have collected to offer us content. This merchant may know that you have visited a dealer's website and then show you car advertisements.
Google is taking the initiative
At the level of the Internet, there are all kinds of users in this world. There are people who are familiar with computers and the repercussions of certain actions, there are people who use the Internet while remaining cautious, and there are users who engage in with everything, clicking on every links they received, without attention or judgment. This is why it is necessary at some point to put regulations, limitations and instructions for the well-being of all.
Of course, everything is easy when you manage a company, a project or even a state, because there is a decision-making party to take charge of the management and the application of the rule. But what about the Internet? Who is the boss of the Internet? Who will set the limits to an open source technology?
Well, it seems that it was the giant Google that stepped on the ground by announcing in 2019 to rethink and plan a personalized advertising tool that would better respect privacy. The Pricavy Sandbox initiative!
Privacy Sandbox is a resolution by Google to formulate standards allowing websites to access user information without compromising privacy. Its main objective is to facilitate online advertising without the use of third-party cookies by reviewing the tools on which personalized advertising is based. The company, which shocked an entire industry, was very bold in announcing that it was banning third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022, but postponed.
Going in the same direction, other important companies, such as Apple or Mozilla, have decided to go in the same direction by limiting their use of third-party cookies.
Since then, Google has postponed this action to 2023 in order to give advertisers and publishers more time to prepare for this radical change. We are expecting more news in 2024.
From now on, it will no longer be possible to study the behavior of visitors other than on sites visited directly, whose managers must respect the privacy policies; preventing data from being shared without authorization.
Marketers will find other ways to collect data
Marketers are aware of the upcoming movement and more users in general are aware of their privacy right on the web. Companies and their marketing team will have to find ways other than collecting data from tools and platforms using third-party cookies to study certain user behaviors.
These teams will have to use more direct and voluntary commitment-based methods to collect relevant information from their customers. We are also seeing an increase in the use of surveys and purchase tracking emails becoming new standards of online commerce in order to collect information. Recognition and personalization of customer service, such as loyalty and subscription services, are actions that should become commonplace in the coming years.
Isn't what is now called zero-party data collection, since disclosed directly by the consumer to the company on a voluntary basis, the most appropriate way to collect data in an era when web users are looking for the truth? It seems that Google will have targeted just right!
Conclusion
I hope that this little cookie history, much more entertaining than Wiki, has allowed you to understand the usefulness and technicality of the web.
As the digital ecosystem shifts towards enhanced user privacy, understanding the role and evolution of cookies is crucial for both users and businesses. Staying informed and adapting to these changes ensures a safer and more transparent online environment.
Upcoming: This article is part of a series exploring modern web analytics.
Stay tuned for our next piece, "The Future of Web Analytics Without Third-Party Cookies," to be featured in The Monthly, April 2025. We'll delve into alternative strategies and tools for effective web performance analysis in a post-cookie world.
See you soon,
Jeff Maheux
Image credits: montages made with free images or from pexels.com. Thank you to all the pexels photographers: Four macarons from Arminas Raudys; Google tablet from PhotoMIX Company.
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