A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to as a “device”) by websites that you visit. They are commonly used in order to make websites work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

A new European law requires to explain what cookies there are, explain what the cookies are doing and obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device. Each European member state is ratifying a directive to pass a similar law for their country. Consumer consent is required but may be interpreted differently per territory, to apply the two forms of consent:

Implied consent can be satisfied by simply leaving user’s default privacy settings as they are, while displaying a notice on how a website is collecting data.

Explicit consent can be satisfied by proactive browser setting and opt-in / opt-out cookie functionalities that store your preference for your future visits to a site.

Analytics / Performance cookies - Google analytics scripts:

These cookies collect information about how visitors use our website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, how long for and which links are followed. We can use this information to provide more content which is of interest and in order to:

Google or Bing scripts : measure standard analytics KPIs on web or search usage for a visitor (ex. page traffic, nbr of visitors, traffic sources, keywords typed, download, click, etc).

can only provide limited snapshots of public information of a visitor and his IP address, so there is no private information that identifies specifically a visitor as the information is mostly aggregated.