Can a business discover personal information about a user by analysing the cookies on the users computer?
A business can analyse data that a consumer has provided via a website in association with cookies. However, any information gleaned by using cookies is exclusively useful to the server of the original website that installed the files. One webmaster’s cookie cannot be read by the systems of another webmaster supporting a different website. Cookies can only be read by the server that first installed the cookie. Unauthorised sharing or collating of this information is prohibited by the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive. If users do not want a particular business to analyse their personal data, then they have the choice not to provide their personal data to websites.
