Website owners and their visitors wonder about the answers of many questions such as what a cookie is, how we can manage cookies, what a cookie policy serves for. Cookies are small text files which are stored by the websites on the computers and mobile devices of their visitors. If you have a website where cookies are used, you need a cookie policy. So what is a cookie policy, what does a cookie policy serve for?
Cookie Management and Cookie Policy
What Is A Cookie Policy? What Does A Cookie Policy Serve For?
Usually, a cookie policy aims to improve the user experience and clarify how and with whom your website or mobile application uses the cookies. It can contain personal information about the user or the behaviours of the user on the website in order to improve the user experience.
Cookies are text files which are used to identify your computer on a network and contain small information items such as login name and password. Cookies, which are called HTTP cookies, are used for defining the specific users and improving their navigation experience. The server creates the data stored in a cookie upon your connection. This information are marked with an identifier which is specific to you and your computer. When a cookie is transferred between your machine and the server, the server reads the identification and knows which information it will provide to you exactly.
Cookie policies should not be confused with the privacy policies. You need to use a cookie management platform in order to manage these cookies.
What Is The Difference Between The Cookie and Privacy Policies?
Technology has reached a point where cookies can be used to track a user’s movements from one website to another. During the process of cookie management, a user approval is obtained for the cookies, why the cookies are collected and where they will be used are clarified and the collected permissions are updated.
The question about what the use of a cookie means might confuse the website visitors. Cookie management platforms collect or store cookies on their websites in accordance with legal requirements generally. These platforms, which provide a safe cookie use, help to manage user consents in terms of privacy, sharing and collecting personal customer data. In this case, the website informs its visitors about what type of data it will collect from them for the cookies and uses the properties such as a permission request.
A user needs to be informed about the tracking process in order to disable the tracking of his/her data. If this not an option, you might violate the law.
Differently from the cookie policy, the purpose of the privacy policy is to explain to your customers how your company collects, distributes and uses their personal data. All the data privacy regulations across the world require privacy policies to clearly put forward which personal data are collected, why they are collected, who can access these data and how the users can take back the control of their personal data.
Which Data Should A Cookie Policy Contain?
A cookie policy should contain many different data. Even though the data within the scope of the cookie policies vary among the regions and countries, they are usually the same. These data should contain the following:
• An explanation about what the cookies are,
• The types of the cookies used by you or the third parties,
• How you collect the personal data (e.g. the forms, records, subscriptions),
• The reason why you collect the data,
• The details regarding how a user shall disable the cookies,
• The instructions regarding how the users can adjust their cookie preferences or revoke them.
How Can We Manage A Cookie? What Is The Cookie Regulation On The Protection Of Personal Data (KVKK)?
Every organisation, which processes the personal data of their website visitors to avoid the legal results, should conform to all laws and regulations while doing that. For this reason, express consent has a great importance for the personal data. The website administrators should inform the visitors about third party cookies which they use on their websites, they should also obtain a permission from their visitors before using third party command files.
In order to maintain compliance with both KVKK and GDPR, cookie management may take time and requires advanced technical speciality. For this reason, the use of cookie management platforms shall facilitate the business of the enterprises.
Cookie management platforms automatize the consent management processes and make it easier for the companies to comply with ever-changing data privacy regulations. An efficient cookie management platform can respond to the requests of the visitors regarding accessing the personal data the website has obtained about them and deleting these data by informing them about the data types they shall collect and for what these data types shall be used. The answer of the question about how long the personal data can be stored varies by the personal data source.
Since new privacy rules have entered into force, the enterprises should apply the most efficient cookie validation solution for their software. As the execution of privacy regulations rises quickly in the world, very few companies, websites and conditions shall be exempted from the requirement of obtaining an approval. Any organisation, which collects user data or deals with sharing, purchasing or selling consumer data, shall have a special system to obtain and manage the permissions.
A Quick Glance At The Cookie, Cookie Policy and Cookie Management
• What Is A Cookie?
To sum up the above-mentioned details briefly, the cookies are small files that are sent from the websites you have visited to your browser. Browser cookies track the websites you have visited and the items you have clicked on these pages.
• How Should A Cookie Policy Be?
The companies should explain to their customers which types of cookies they use, why they use these cookies, how they shall make the cookie settings and delete the current cookies in the cookie policies. The cookie policy may be changed based on the kind and size of the company and the country where it operates. It is important for the user to understand these informative details easily.
• Cookie Management and Express Consent
A user approval is required to store the cookies in the user’s device or use them. This is an issue, which is required to be explained to the visitors of the websites using cookies. In order to facilitate this cookie management process, the companies prefer to use cookie management platforms. Cookie management systems used by the companies document and manage the user approval legally before collecting data from the websites, which use cookies, embedded videos or other tracking technologies and from online sources such as applications, and before sharing or selling these data.
The end users can obtain more information about specific sellers and organisations, which demand to learn how online events are recorded, their collection reasons and use this information, by using the cookie management tools.
Now, it is possible to allow all the specified parties or only specific parties to use cookies or cancel the use of them via cookie management platform. The data regarding user permission can be stored legally by cookie management service providers and this allows them to share such information with the third parties such as ad agencies and broadcasting companies before an official data processing is carried out.