The Municipal Website Venture is taking steps to enable Partners to inform website visitors of downloaded cookies as well as request consent to have them served. This promotes transparency and acknowledges the importance of allowing visitors to exercise control over their data.
Cookies are tiny text files that are downloaded onto your website visitor’s device (i.e. laptop or smartphone) when they visit your website. They are used to personalize your browsing experience by tracking and storing your activities.
Data stored in a cookie may include login details, session information that acts as bookmarks, shopping cart details on an Ecommerce site, analytic data, user preferences, for example choosing a certain layout.
In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. It is a regulation in European Union (EU) law designed to protect the rights of (EU) citizens by allowing website users to maintain control of their data.
According to this legislation if a website serves cookies to a device that accesses it and the user is based in the EU, or if a citizen based in the EU may interact with your site, you’re required to obtain user consent. The regulations surrounding cookies make it very clear that a user must take an action which indicates the acceptance of, and consent to, the use of cookies.