The Law
26th May 2011 saw alterations made to Regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications
Regulation
2003 (PECR) which focussed on electronic privacy and in particular the use of website cookies. This
resulted
in a new EU and UK law being passed. The following is the new addition to Regulation 6:
- A person shall not store or gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a
subscriber
or user unless the requirements of paragraph [2] are met.
- The requirements are that the subscriber or user of that terminal equipment:
- Is provided with clear and comprehensive information about the purposes of the storage of,
or
access to, that information; and
- Has given his or her consent.
In plain English, the law states those people whose websites set cookies must:
- Tell users what the cookies are.
- Explain what the cookies are doing.
- Obtain the user’s consent to store most (all cookies except one deemed ‘strictly necessary’ require
the
user’s permission to be used) cookies on their device.
A cookie is a small text file that is put on a user’s computer when they visit and/or do things on a
website.
Cookies have been around for years and carry data and not code, so are unable to transmit anything
dangerous. The main job of a cookie is to remember things – ranging from your favourite font size or
what
marketing material you are likely to browse, both with different levels of intrusiveness.
Types of Cookies
There are four types of cookies, session, persistent, first-party and third party.
- Session cookies
- Only remain active whilst visiting the website. Stores the fact that you have logged on to
the
website. Usually deleted by the web browser and deemed unobtrusive.
- Persistent cookies
- Can last for years and are not deleted by the web browser. Are used by Google’s new
remarketing
service and deemed more intrusive than session cookies as this data is used by
third-parties.
- First-party cookies
- Cookies set up by the visiting website. The cookie can only read pages that it was
designated to
by the creator. Deemed unobtrusive, yet depends on the scale of the website.
- Third-party cookies
- Considered more obtrusive. Website ‘A’ is visited by user ‘Bob’. Website ‘B’ has created a
cookie to read from ‘A’. The creator of the cookie is untraceable from both websites. The
cookie
can then be used for marketing and building up a browser history of Bob across all the
websites
he visits that have this cookie attached to them.
Our Website
This website uses the following cookies on each page:
- Session cookies
- To allow us to offer features such as recently viewed properties and compare properties and
is deemed necessary.
- Third-Party cookies
- On pages containing a form, you may receive cookies from Cloudflare.com to help determine whether you are a human or a bot.
These are used only for this purpose and is deemed a functional cookie to maintain the security of the website.
- This website uses custom fonts from Bunny.net, which is a GDPR-compliant alternative to Google Fonts, which may occasionally use completely anonymous cookies.
These are strictly not used for any form of tracking or fingerprinting.
This website doesn't require a banner on the home page asking you to allow cookie usage, as our
cookies are used for features and security, and not for tracking or fingerprinting.
