Know Your Data: Controlling Your Cookies With the Chartered Institute of Marketing

Know Your Data is back in 2022! We started the year by speaking with Daniel Rowles, Course Director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing – the UK’s industry body for marketing with over 20,000 members. Daniel is also the CEO of Target Internet and a program director at Imperial College, a world-class research university based in London.

He joined us to explain the concept of “cookies” and discuss what happens to the data we share with our internet browser.

Although cookies are sometimes perceived negatively, they are actually an essential part of browser infrastructure. Introduced to address the limitations of a “stateless” internet, cookies are text files that track online activity and allow websites to remember log-in details and preferences.

However, it is third-party cookies – and the data sharing between browsers and brands they allow – that have damaged consumer trust. This is exacerbated by a widespread lack of understanding of the implications of “opting in” to website cookies.

As cookie notifications seemingly appear after every click and swipe, and the ways that companies use browsing data to target consumers evolve, cookie fatigue can prevent users from thinking carefully about what is happening to their data. It can be disconcerting for consumers to feel as if they are being “followed” by brands across the internet.

In this context, how can internet users improve their data literacy to take control of their cookies? Do marketers have a good enough understanding of data and analytics to implement cookies effectively? And, what role can tech companies and browser orchestrators play in preserving consumer data privacy?

Tune in to the latest episode to find out more.

The Know Your Data series from the Data Literacy Project aims to help you all understand the graphs, charts and data terms you are seeing across the news, online and elsewhere in your daily lives. Check out our previous episodes with Experian and the NCRI, which tackle the important financial data we need to understand, and the thorny issue of misinformation, respectively.

If there are any future topics you’d like us to cover in Know Your Data, please comment below or you can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram – just make sure to include the hashtag #BeDataBrilliant in your social post. Or email us at hello@thedataliteracyproject.org.

Do you automatically hit "accept all" when your browser asks you about cookies? @Qlik's @KevinHanegan & @DanielRowles explain what this means for your personal #data in #KnowYourData