Changes to cookie management in Chrome

e-Privacy Directive (EPD)

For those of us who live online, there are big changes underway in cookie management that fundamentally change the way things work, how websites can be customised, communications personalised and web behaviours analysed. GDPR was a foretaste and is about how information is collected, stored and managed. In the near future (still unclear when), the current EU e-Privacy Directive (EPD) rules that deal with cookies, among other things, will be updated and upgraded to the e-Privacy Regulation (EPR).The closest change is already coming in February 2020 when Chrome will be the first browser to change the handling of "SameSite cookies". The background is to try to reduce the risk of false requests between Sites or cross-site request forgery (CSRF).Chrome's SameSitestatus explains it like this: "SameSite" is a reasonably robust defense against some classes of cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks, but developers currently need to opt-into its protections by specifying a SameSite attribute. In other words, developers are vulnerable to CSRF attacks by default. This change would allow developers to be protected by default, while allowing sites that require state in cross-site requests to opt-in to the status quo's less-secure model. In addition, forcing sites to opt-in to SameSite=None gives the user agent the ability to provide users more transparency and control over tracking.

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Is this the beginning of the end for smart, managed communication and advertising?

No, it probably isn't, but it does set completely new requirements and requires the industry to make major adjustments.Here's a list of the scenarios that are likely to be affected by the changes to cookie management:

• Integrations with identity providers using protocols such as SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect.
• Embedding web application content from a third party domain ex iframes.
• API requests from a third-party domain.

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Good sources if you want to know more about the upcoming change:

• SameSite cookies explained.
• The third-party browser tracking cookie is dead. What's next?

Also read more in the EU e-Privacy Directive EPD and the upcoming update called e-Privacy Regulation EPR

• EU Cookie, the GDPR and e-privacy Directive.

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