(Post by Patrick Lee, 28 August 2018).

Further to my previous article on the EU and cookies, here is a link to a short video “The EU website has no cookies notice”.

This can be viewed as a curiosity if the EU updates its website to include cookie notices, so that it is in line with what many (most) businesses have felt they have had to do. And some – but by no means all – country data protection regulators.

So, what ARE the country data protection regulators doing about cookies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_data_protection_authority has a list of data protection regulators.

This is by no means an exhaustive survey, but from the ones that I have looked at so far:

Regulators with cookie notices on their sites

UK: https://ico.org.uk/

France: https://www.cnil.fr/

Belgium: https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be/

Luxembourg: https://cnpd.public.lu/en/commission-nationale.html

Regulators with no cookie notices on their sites, despite using cookies

Germany: https://www.bfdi.bund.de

Ireland: https://www.dataprotection.ie/

Italy: https://www.garanteprivacy.it/

Netherlands: https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl (NB it also seems very hard to find a privacy policy or cookies policy page on their site).

Sweden: https://www.datainspektionen.se/

Norway: https://www.datatilsynet.no

Iceland: https://www.personuvernd.is

Greece: http://www.dpa.gr/

Regulators with no cookie notices on their sites (but don’t seem to use cookies)

Spain: https://www.aepd.es/

Portugal: https://www.cnpd.pt/ (while searching for the site, I also found this story: “Portugal Data Protection Commission too broke to comply with GDPR“).

Some of the websites were very pleasing on the eye, others less so

It was interesting looking at the various country regulators’ websites. There was a very wide contrast in how modern the sites looked.

I have not looked at how good the sites are from a functionality point of view are, but my favourite site from an aesthetic point of view was the Dutch one:

I also liked the look and feel of the Icelandic and Swedish websites.

In contrast, here are a couple which looked old fashioned or a bit garish:

The obvious question

If so many of the regulators don’t seem to bother with cookie notices (even when, like the EU, Germany and many others, they are using cookies), why are the rest of us spending so much time on this?

#EU #cookies #GDPR #privacy #regulation