John Lewis and The EU Cookie Law Sham
I’m against the EU cookie law. I think it’s a waste of time, it’s in the wrong place, it’s been implemented without consulting experts in the industry and it’s going to cost an insane amount of money to implement. That said, if the EU really want to go after cookie abusers then there are a few companies they’d do well to legislate against. John Lewis is a fantastic example of a website that abuses third party cookies.
Buy A Table. BUY A TABLE. BUY A TABLE!!!
In a vanilla web browser, try going to the John Lewis website, and then check out – say – icanhascheezburger.com/, just take a look at the adverts on that page. I tried this by looking at a table in the garden furniture section of their website. Pretty much every website with adverts I went to after tried to sell me garden furniture from John Lewis.
Cookie Law Compliance
John Lewis’ attempt at EU Cookie Law compliance is to bring up a message on the first visit at the top of the page that simply says “Our website uses cookies so that you can place orders and we can provide a better service. Continue to use the site as normal if you’re happy with this, or find out how to manage cookies”.
Theoretically they’re just about compliant, but by this point they’ve already set 62 cookies from across 19 different domains. Their message makes no mention of what they use the cookies for. If you dig down into their cookie policy they do have a structured breakdown of what each cookie is for, but in vague language. I can’t be too critical though, after all the average person isn’t going to understand what a state cookie is used for.
Third Party Cookies and The EU Cookie Law
In my opinion it is the websites such as John Lewis that should be being made to disclose more information on their usage of cookies. Nobody really cares about the cookies on the John Lewis domain, it’s the cookies on the other 18 domains that worry me. If they had to obtain consent to set these cookies then the law might actually be of some use, even if it is still annoying.
It’s Not Just John Lewis
I’ve singled John Lewis out, but they’re by no means the only website doing this. The mechanism by which your browsing habits are used to tailor adverts to you on other websites is through companies such as Criteo, Affiliate Window, Google DoubleClick, YieldManager, etc. These are the companies – if anyone – that need to be cracked down on by the law, to make it easier for customers to avoid being tracked everywhere they go.
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