Cookie Reports offers an advanced level of automation to support organisations in the assessment of web estate, identification of cookies and solutions around reporting the detail and gaining differing levels of consent. Cookie Reports delivers both automated reporting and managed services, the later primarily through their expert partners.

Working on a pan- European basis, with local operations in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the UK, they support membership bodies, governments and regulators with solutions to help locate verify and report cookies – ensuring our clients are both in control and confident about cookie management.

Many members have asked us what they can do to comply with 'the EU Privacy law'.  Our answer up until now has been simply to take advice from your lawyer!  This we felt was not a very satisfactory position, not least because the clear advice from ICO is "the first action should be to audit your site, be aware of what's really out there".  

Hence, we researched how this could be done and considered the best way to help our members.  In the course of this work it became apparent that for most sites there was an issue of scale that required a technical solution.  We identified Cookie Reports Limited as a provider of such a solution and progressed with them as they were willing to a) allow us to test their solution (see below) and b) agree attractive terms for our members. 

We have therefore agreed, on a non-exclusive basis, to work with Cookie Reports Limited to provide an entirely optional service to our members.

We tested the service to confirm that it does what it claims.  The testing we completed is as follows.  We selected 9 domains from our current clients to give us confidence that results reflect member sites as follows:

• One National newspaper site
• One large & one small regional newspaper site
• One large & one small consumer magazine site
• One large & one small business magazine site
• One large & one small recruitment site

For each we manually reviewed the homepage and 2 other significant landing pages (so a total of 3x9=27 pages).  Our testing was conducted on 27 October 2011.  We ran some activity from around 11:15 to around 14:40 on that day through a proxy to capture all HTTP transactions. The proxy logged all HTTP calls whose source was these pages.  We used a normal web browser, an iPad and a Samsung Galaxy Tablet (Android OS) to make the requests.

We processed the proxy logs to generate a report showing originating page, domain setting the cookie, and cookie name.

Simultaneously, Cookie Reports ran their service on the same URLs and we then compared our findings to the Cookie Report findings submitted to us.

Our findings matched with no material issues.

Delivery of reports will be within 2 working days (often quicker)

Yes. The report covers all cookies found on the site tested.

No. There are no industry agreed best practice principles in this area currently.

The ICO have not stated explicitly how companies can comply with the Law so the report cannot show that you meet their requirements. However, the ICO have stated:

"Companies need to start showing they are moving in the right direction as the directive has been around since May. As a regulator, we can point to lots of people doing different things, but do something is the message."

David Evans of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in NMA (12/2011).

The Cookie Reports service is therefore a clear way to demonstrate that you have taken steps to know what cookies you set to browsers accessing your site and hence be able to provide information to site visitors.

More information from the ICO 

No. This is a service provided by a third party as an entirely optional member benefit, so ABC will not issue certificates regarding this service.

Not by ABC or Cookie Reports Limited, the report is completely confidential. You may decide to make the results public but that is entirely up to you.

Yes you can but this is entirely your decision.

Not for the free member summary report, yes for each full report and the on-going monitoring service.

No, see 'What will Cookie Reports provide to ABC members' (in this FAQ).

The Cookie Report service should not materially affect website traffic statistics as it is only providing information about which cookies exist on your site.

No. The Cookie Report service should not materially impact on traffic levels to a site and has no impact on the certification of website traffic figures in terms of compliance with the industry agreed (JICWEBS) standards.

Yes, if other suppliers are able to demonstrate that they can offer an equivalent service and are willing to make this service available on a similar basis.

They are based on W3C Consortium standards see: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/

• Information Commissioner's Office - www.ico.gov.uk.
• All about cookies - www.allaboutcookies.org.
• Cookie Reports Limited – (ABC cookie reports link)