You can’t have your cookie and eat it, too
Where we learn what the Migros Cumulus and the Coop Supercard have in common with web cookies
Recently, the new data protection regulation of the European Union came into force. One of the most visible effects of this legislation is the endless stream of pop-ups appearing on websites and asking you to accept the site’s “cookie policy”. Of course, if you’re like me, you just end up pressing OK, hoping for the best. But what are these cookies, actually?
A good analogy is that of a supermarket’s loyalty card. Most people have a Migros Cumulus or a Coop Supercard. When you show this card at the check-out, the system remembers who you are and increases your store points, to then send you advertisement tuned to your shopping habits or offer you discounts.
Cookies on a website work in a very similar way. Like an invisible loyalty card, they assign a unique code to you (the famous “cookie”) when you visit a website for the first time. This code is then stored in your browser, and from then on, every time you visit the website, the cookie will be used to identify you. Cookies are thus very useful, since they allow websites to remember your preferred language or the contents of your shopping cart. So where is the problem?
Let’s go back to the shopping card analogy. Imagine you only had a single shopping card that you can use in any store (instead of having a Cumulus or a Supercard). This would certainly be convenient, but it opens a way for companies to share information about you. And this is precisely what cookies have evolved to. The scariest part is that this exchange of information happens without you even knowing, a bit like if your universal shopping card would be read inside your wallet when you enter a new shop, without asking for your consent!
These universal cookies are called third-party cookies, and are cookies that are surreptitiously inserted by advertisers on the website you’re visiting. They can be read by a lot of other sites and are used to track your Internet habits. Have you ever visited, say, an online mattress shop and the next day, as if by magic, you see a mattress advertisement alongside the news in your online paper? Well, that’s how it’s done. The third-party cookies informed the website of the online paper. Of course, there are also harmless cookies that remember your data only for a given website and won’t share this information. These are called first-party cookies. But in general, all cookies are pretty harmless compared to the information you give out every time you use your credit card or turn on your cell phone.
So, should you accept cookies or not when visiting a new website? This depends really on you. If you accept them, the website will save your language settings and offer a better service. If not, you will be asked again your language preference every time. Ironically, you will also be asked again to accept a cookie or not. So one thing is sure, you can’t have your cookie and eat it at the same time.
