The UK data protection authority, Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO), has recently published news regarding their online tracking strategy for 2025.
Recognizing that “being tracked online is part of daily life for most people”, in 2024 the ICO implemented a number of initiatives to enhance people’s control over how they are tracked. Among such initiatives, the Commissioner assessed the compliance of the top 200 UK’s websites in 2024. As a result, 134 of such websites were advised to bring their online tracking practices to compliance to avoid regulatory action and some of them were fined for their use of cookies without consent.
Lack of information and choices in online tracking
Although the ICO recognizes that online tracking enables users to receive more personalized and tailored advertisements, it expects website operators to only allow online tracking for these and other purposes in ways that people understand and expect. Giving people the option to reject non-essential tracking is, in this sense, essential to ensure a fair processing of personal data by online tracking systems. As a matter of fact, the ICO mentions that 60% of the cookie-related concerns received in 2024 referred to the lack of mechanisms to allow people to reject non-essential cookie tracking. Other issues leading to non-compliance referred to the lack of information regarding the choices provided to individuals and the purposes for which they were agreeing for their personal data to be processed. Transparency and simplified controls are in this sense essential as well as allowing people the possibility to easily revoke their consent when they change their mind.
In view of this, the Commissioner’s Office is set to promote compliance with the law in 2025 to ensure an online tracking ecosystem that processes personal data in more fair and transparent ways. For this purpose, the ICO will clarify how the law in this field applies through guidelines and other publications, cooperate with relevant stakeholders to promote a privacy-oriented online ecosystem, investigate non-compliance and enforce regulatory action by auditing the top 1000 UK websites .
Focus on Online Advertising in 2025
Indeed, the ICO’s focus in 2025 will be on online advertising and, in particular, the processing of personal data obtained from people’s online interactions to create detailed profiles that would allow individualized insights about such people and ultimately decisions to be made on the basis of such insights. Special categories of personal data could be processed for these purposes increasing the risk for people in vulnerable positions who could as a result modify their online activities to avoid harms to their privacy and the risk of discrimination. Here is where ensuring control over the personal data that people share online becomes essential and where the ICO’s work is set to allow people to take and keep control of their personal data in the online ecosystem.
Promoting a privacy-friendly approach
In terms of their engagement with relevant stakeholders, the ICO recognizes that no website operator will take the first step towards compliance because if they do unilaterally, they will face market disadvantages compared with their competitors. Hence, the Commissioner’s efforts in 2025 and beyond will focus on promoting a level playing field for all where incentives are provided to companies to implement online strategies which uphold privacy-friendly approaches.
Against this backdrop, the strategy on the ICO for 2025 involves extending their audit to the 1,000 most popular websites in the UK to assess their compliance regarding online tracking for the purposes of personalized advertisement. Alongside this strategy, the ICO will publish guidance on ‘consent or pay’ models and work together with the online advertising industry on developing a certification scheme to enable organizations to show they are processing personal information in compliance with the law.
These are indeed interesting news for our clients operating in the UK. Contact us if you would like to know more or if you want your website assessed for compliance!