article_snippet: – little pieces of tracking data - to collect information about people’s activity online,
article_snippet: Under EU privacy law websites must gain consent before using a cookie, with few exceptions, and websites must ask users to accept cookies when users visit for the first time.
article_snippet: Many online companies use cookies, sent over the internet and ‘planted’ on
article_snippet: people’s computers, to gather as much information as Many online companies can about Many online companies users.
article_snippet: These little pieces of data send information back to Many online companies, allowing Many online companies to ‘remember’ the user.
article_snippet: Often this can help Many online companies do simple things like ‘remembering’ the user, so that Many online companies don’t have to log in afresh every time Many online companies visit a particular website.
article_snippet: But cookies are also used to gather information about what websites people have visited, at which times of day, so that companies can target companies with carefully tailored adverts.
article_snippet: This practice, known as ‘behavioural advertising ‘, means that users who research a particular car online, for example, would then see an advert for the same car when they visit an unrelated website.
article_snippet: Users can theoretically stop companies from tracking companies information in this way by clicking an ‘ad choices’ button, featured on many websites.
article_snippet: Once they click an ‘ad choices’ button, featured on many websites, people are invited to pick and choose which internet companies are allowed to track people, or just ban people altogether.
article_snippet: To be legally valid, an individual's consent towards online behavioural advertising must be opt-in. '