The cookie gets too much bad press

By: Andrew Stockwell | August 5th, 2009

A few weeks ago I was visiting my parents back home and happened to witness my mother logging onto the internet. The very first thing she did was go into the internet tools menu and clear her cookies. I asked why and was told she was concerned about people watching her, clearly imagining in her minds eye some form of masked raider. ‘Stranger than strange’ I thought as this is the person I have probably seen give more feedback in many more high street stores than any other human on the planet!

This scenario brings into question the concepts of privacy and transparency; people need to know what companies are doing to monitor them and why they are doing it. If my mother was told the absolute truth about tracking (that she was being ‘cookied’ to get a better web experience and more ‘relevant opportunities to buy’) she would be hounding companies to get their cookies on her machine!

The good news is many companies are now moving towards more transparency detailing in their privacy policy, showing in clear open words exactly why they want behavioural data on customer activity. See good examples from the IAB:

http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/privacy.html

As online marketers we need to turn customers into friends and friends into advocates; it’s the best acquisition and retention strategy available.

Another relevant example of the shift in perception on the way cookies are used has been seen in the US since the inauguration of President Obama. After one of the most successful (…and expensive) online customer acquisition campaigns in history, began a retention strategy which involved for the first time potentially setting cookies on all the core government web properties. Federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra and OMB associate administrator Michael Fitzpatrick have been quoted on a US government blog post,

“The goal of this review is to develop a new policy that allows the federal government to continue to protect the privacy of people who visit federal websites while, at the same time, making these websites more user-friendly, providing better customer service, and allowing for enhanced web analytics.”

See the full post here:

http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/07/24/cookiepolicy

Federal websites in June 2000 were stopped from using web-tracking technologies involving persistent cookies due to privacy concerns. However cookies have since become “a staple of most commercial websites with widespread public acceptance of their use”, say Kundra and Fitzpatrick backing what many in the online industry have seen (and indeed extracted lots of value from) for over 10 years.

Eric Peterson has also put some great thoughts down regarding the Whitehouse cookie policy and indeed the scaremongering associated with cookies as a whole. My personal favourite is his ‘real’ reasons why someone would delete a cookie:

http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/2009/01/barack-obama-should-not-fear-cookies.html

There are obviously people out there who will use technology for something other than the greater good, cookies can be used for web bugs or viruses where 3^rd parties harvest machines for personal information, this is where the bad press can come from. The key thing here is that you must get at how people are using the technology (the cookie) rather than going out and trying to ban it.

As always Avinash has a fabulous description that explains in more detail what cookie types exist:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/07/web-analytics-visitor-tracking-cookies.html

Cookies are a fantastic opportunity for companies and customers. We need to continue the education process to ensure they are used to optimise what we do and continue to help our customers. We also, as an industry, need to ensure cookies are never used inappropriately without the customers best interests at heart.

Until next time keep being customer centric with your cookie use!