Legal Alert | The Data Protection Authority warns of deficiencies in cookies bars

Although it has been more than half a year since the amendment to the Electronic Communications Act came into force, which brought a fundamental change to the Czech legislation on cookies, in particular the opt-in mechanism, not everyone has yet adapted and made the necessary adjustments.

Based on six months of monitoring, the Data Protection Authority has identified a number of deficiencies committed by website operators, in particular:

• use of non-technical cookies without consent;
• disproportionately long period of validity of cookies in relation to their purpose;
• absence of an option to oppose the use of non-technical cookies in the first layer of the cookie bar;
• wrong categorisation of cookies;
• absence of information about specific cookies used;
• difference in the visibility of the buttons for agreeing and disagreeing to the use of non-technical cookies;
• misclassification of cookies;
• cookies information in a foreign language;
• cookies bar makes it difficult or impossible to read the website.

According to the chairman of the DPA, in the first half of the year the authority gave website operators time to adapt to the new legislation. However, they will now start to proactively address personal data controllers who violate the legislation in this area and start to enforce compliance.

If you need advice on the above, please contact our team.