Cookie Law: what you need to know to be comply

All sites that install cookies must show a banner to the user's first visit, put in place a cookie policy and allow the user to provide consent as indicated by law. Before consent is given, no cookie, except technical cookies, can be installed.

Brief information

A brief information note will be provided through a short banner that should disclose the purpose of installation of cookies that the site uses. The banner must be sufficiently discontinuous from the user experience of navigating the site in order to make sure it gets noticed by the user. Among the examples provided by the Authority there are both a version in the middle of the page and a solution with a strip at the top of the site.

Cookie Policy

The Cookie Policy does not need to list - name by name - all the cookies installed by the site. Instead, it must describe in detail the purpose of installation of cookies and indicate all third-parties who install or could install, with a link to the respective privacy policies, Cookie Policy and any consent forms. If the owner of the site installs and operates directly cookies that are not exempt from consent obligation (such as profiling cookies), it is necessary that in the Cookie Policy it is possible to exercise such consent.

Consent

The consent is provided by the user through the continued operation, including clicking on links or scrolling the page. The only situations in which consent is held pending occurs if the user leaves the site without continuing navigation (including scrolling) or if the user reads the Cookie Policy. Inside the Cookie Policy the user may withhold consent to the installation of cookies, but to do so he must visit the sites of the individual services used by the site and refer to their policy and the instructions provided to prevent tracking. The only exception is that mentioned in the section regarding the Cookie Policy in reference to cookies not exempt and managed directly by the owner.

Block cookies before consent

In accordance with general principles of privacy legislation, which prevent the treatment before consent, the Cookie Law does not allow the installation of cookies before obtaining prior consent, except for the exempt categories that will be explained below. In practice, this means that, for example, codes that link banners or simply codes that handle live chat can not run before obtaining prior consent (which, we repeat, is also obtainable by simply scrolling). Adaptation to this law will unfortunately be challenging for many sites and requires changes to the code of the site.

The Authority has been very clear in this regard and you need to adapt if you want to respect the law.

Cookie exempt from consent

Fortunately, some cookies are exempt from consensus and therefore are not subject to the preventive block. Technical cookies, which are those needed to provide the service, including cookies of preference, session, load balancing and so on. Statistics cookies managed directly by the owner, for example through softwares like Piwik; There has lately been an opening of the Authority - albeit unofficial - to consider as exempt from the consent also statistical cookies used by third party (eg. Google Analytics), but only if the data is anonymised before being saved by the third service.