The Information Commissioner’s Office has announced plans to bring the UK’s top 1,000 websites into compliance with data protection law, focusing particularly on cookie compliance.

The ICO says it has already assessed the compliance of the top 200 UK websites and communicated concerns to 134 of those organisations, setting out clear regulatory expectations that organisations must comply with the law by giving people meaningful choice on how their personal information is used online.

“Uncontrolled tracking intrudes on the most private parts of our lives and can lead to harm,” Stephen Almost, ICO executive director of regulatory risk, said.

“For example, gambling addicts being targeted with more betting ads due to their browsing history or LGBTQ+ people altering their online behaviour for fear of unintended disclosure of their sexuality.

“Our ambition is to ensure everybody has meaningful choice over how they are tracked online and what we’re publishing today sets out how we intend to achieve that.

“Last year, we saw significant improvements in compliance among the top 200 websites in what was a promising step forward for the industry. Now, we are expanding our focus to the top 1,000 websites – and beyond that to apps and connected TVs.

“We’ll continue to hold organisations to account but we’re also here to make it easier for publishers to adopt compliant, privacy-friendly business models.  By combining advice, guidance, and targeted enforcement, we aim to create an environment where businesses can succeed, and people can have trust and control over their online experiences.”

The new action forms part of the ICO’s online tracking strategy for the new year, which seeks to ensure that people have meaningful control over how their personal information is tracked and used online. The strategy plans to address the significant harm that can occur when online tracking practices are misused.

The release of the strategy coincides with new measures to support businesses to adopt more privacy-friendly business models that give users the lawful choice and control they expect.

Recommended reading

• ICO: Data Protection Not An Excuse When Tackling Scams, Fraud
• Meta’s Pay or Consent Model Found in Breach of EU’s Market Rules
• Data Privacy Day: Where are We and How Did We Get Here?

This includes draft guidance on tracking people online, based on last year’s consultation on ‘consent or pay’ models. These include models where organisations give people the option between agreeing to personalised adverts – and the data harvesting necessary to produce these – or paying to access a service and avoid these adverts and the data harvesting integral to them.

The ICO’s new guidance clarifies how organisations can deploy ‘consent or pay’ models to give users meaningful control while supporting their economic viability and includes a set of factors for organisations to assess their models against to demonstrate people can freely give their consent.

In the guidance, organisations are provided with a set of factors to “assess whether people can freely give their consent or not in the context of a “consent or pay” model.”

The “or not” stipulation here should raise questions, as not giving consent does come with a monetary price, and therefore would not necessarily be “freely” given.

“Tracking should work for everyone – giving people clear choices and confidence in how their information is used, while enabling businesses to operate fairly and responsibly. Our strategy ensures both,” Almond assured the UK public.