Translation Work From Home - Ecommerce Sites - Beware of 3rd Party Cookies - Are Google Analytics Users in Privacy Breach?

Ecommerce sites require information about site visitors, to be successful.

And what pages do they exit from, what is their pathway through the site, how long do visitors remain on-site? Which search engine produces the most traffic? What sites are the top referrers?

And will you be liable for a privacy policy breach, are you aware of the privacy concerns, if you use 3rd party cookies? One method of collecting this information is often referred to as using 3rd party cookies.

What's A "Cookie" Anyway?

The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. The browser stores the message in a text file called cookie.txt. A cookie is a message given to a Web browser by a Web server.

Or the cookie may "remember" the user's contact information so the user will not have to re-key it on future site visits, a cookie may include information about the purchases that the user makes (if the Web site is an ecommerce site), for example. Information gained with cookies helps the Web server track such things as user preferences and data that the user may submit while browsing the site.

1st Party and 3rd Party Cookies Distinguished

That cookie is called a 3rd party cookie, if you hire an independent company (such as Google with its Google Analytics program) to pass the cookie, on the other hand. And the data generated remains with your site, they are passed to a visitor by your site, if you use 1st party cookies. There is an important difference between 1st party and 3rd party cookies.

Privacy Concerns With 3rd Party Cookies

Or whether the 3rd party sites use the data for purposes of cross-website profiling and ad targeting, users have questioned whether these 3rd party sites aggregate the data among many sites and report ecommerce trends to the media, for example. The fact that you do not control these 3rd party sites and their use of this data has raised concerns among many users. Privacy concerns arise from the fact that the data generated with 3rd party cookies resides on the servers of the 3rd party --- not your server.

And it's generally believed that the failure to adequately disclose the details of the use of 3rd party cookies is a violation of EU law, and how they can be avoided, what they're used for, it's illegal to pass cookies without informing users that you do, in the European Union. And what is your legal obligation to disclose the use of 3rd party cookies?

And the answers are less certain, there is an evolving debate regarding the same issues, in the US.

Conclusion

And how they're used and avoided, you clearly disclose in your privacy policy the distinction between 3rd and 1st party cookies, it's recommended that if you use 3rd party cookies.

In amending your Privacy Policy because amendments may not be effective retroactively for data collected with 3rd party cookies prior to the amendment, however, be careful.